Kanye West Says Adidas Is Holding Him Back, Calls Jerry Lorenzo ‘Corny and Disloyal’
Kanye West is once again airing his grievances on social media, taking to Instagram Tuesday night to share one of his patented punctuation-free statements. This time, he’s taking aim at partner-turned-rival Adidas, Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo and other unnamed designers who he says copied his once-flourishing Yeezy line.
West, who now goes by Ye, began his latest post by insinuating that Adidas intentionally positioned itself atop of the Google search results for yeezy.com. His comments have been lightly edited for clarity.
“When you Google Yeezy.com the Adidas site comes before the Yeezy site,” West wrote alongside a screenshot of the search. “Members at Adidas stop doing this, stop doing your moves to hold me back, our partnership is done.”
In reality, it’s more likely that Google’s SEO algorithm was simply favoring Adidas’ Yeezy landing page due to the collaboration’s past popularity, which saw it dominate sneakers and streetwear for much of the late 2010s and early 2020s. In comparison, West’s yeezy.com brand is a more recent launch, which would theoretically place it lower in popularity.
As of Wednesday morning, the search results for “yeezy.com” appear to have been adjusted and no longer show an Adidas website. Adidas’ Yeezy news page also looks to have been deleted from the brand’s site altogether, perhaps in effort to placate the former collaborator. However, it’s also possible West searched for “yeezy” instead of the website itself — his search bar isn’t visible in the screenshot —which as of publishing does show a different adidas.com as the top result.
But West’s rant didn’t end there. His next target was Lorenzo, a peer of West’s who was once part of his inner circle. West called Lorenzo “corny” and claimed the 2023 Fear of God Hollywood Bowl show was a rip-off of West’s own 2015 concert at the venue.
“Side note y’all know Jerry was corny and disloyal for doing work with Adidas after the way they handled things,” West wrote. “I still showed up to his show that was a copy of my Hollywood bowl show being the so-called bigger man but I’m never doing that again for no one. It’s Yeezy over everything.”
The rapper, who has been teasing the release of a new album titled “Bully,” also called out designers who he says copied the Yeezy aesthetic. “Everyone that ever took a picture next to me that had their own clothing lines and agendas, everyone knows they was acting like they were my friends to promote they weak ass fake Yeezy lines. They never wanted to truly work for the king. They wanted to use the king [to] get paid more than they would get paid anywhere else.”
West went on to talk up his latest Yeezy pivot, a collaboration with Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy in which all products are priced at $20 each. According to West, the yeezy.com site in 2024 made $100 million during a six-month period.
On the footwear front, West added that the brand sold over a million pairs of the sock-like Yeezy Pods and that he has been working on “10 other styles” for the past two years.
Representatives for Adidas and Lorenzo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.