Kanye West showed up unannounced to Skechers corporate offices on Wednesday in Manhattan Beach, Calif., one day after Adidas terminated its multimillion-dollar partnership with the rapper. Skechers issued a statement saying the company has no plans to collaborate with West.
“Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West. We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate antisemitism or any other form of hate speech,”
a rep for Skechers tells Yahoo Entertainment. “The Company would like to again stress that West showed up unannounced and uninvited to Skechers corporate offices.
“Kanye West escorted out of Skechers 1 day after Adidas ends Yeezy deal
The spokesperson confirms two Skechers executives escorted West and his party from the building after a brief conversation as the fashion designer “was engaged in unauthorized filming.”
West has made multiple antisemitic remarks in recent weeks and has refused to walk any of the statements back. It’s led to the first real business consequences the 45-year-old rapper has ever faced.
After West taunted Adidas and declared that the company can’t drop him given their successful Yeezy partnership, the brand did just that following widespread outrage. According to Forbes, Adidas terminating the deal — which accounted for $1.5 billion of West’s net worth — made the entrepreneur lose his billionaire status, something he frequently boasts about. Although he’s still worth an estimated $400 million, the hits keep coming.
TJ Maxx’s parent company announced they will pull Yeezy-branded merchandise from stores.
“At TJX we do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or hate of any kind. We have instructed our buying teams not to purchase this merchandise for sale in any of our stores globally” the retailer told CNNBusiness on Wednesday. TJX owns off-price retail chains TJ Maxx, Home Goods, and Marshalls. Balenciaga, Gap, and Foot Locker have made similar announcements.
One major company sticking by West is Spotify. The music streaming giant said it will not remove the Grammy winner’s music unless his label requests that to happen. Spotify chief Daniel Ek explained to Reuters that if West made the “awful comments” on a podcast, the material would be pulled as it violates its policies, which prohibit hate speech. However, West’s songs do not violate that policy.
“It’s up to his label if they want to take action or not,” Ek added.
West’s rhetoric has led to a rise in antisemitism hate speech around Los Angeles. The Holocaust Museum of L.A. has received an influx of antisemitic messages after the fashion designer publicly rejected their offer to meet.
“I think Kanye has more than double the amount of Twitter followers than there are Jews living in this world,” Holocaust Museum of L.A. CEO Beth Kean told CBS News. “People like Kanye have a huge platform, he has over 30 million Twitter followers and he needs to understand that he needs to use his words to inspire and not incite and to not perpetuate hate and lies and an antisemitism.”
Kean said the museum’s been overwhelmed with hateful responses since West declined their offer for a private tour on the Drinks Champs podcast. The rapper, who changed his name to Ye, purportedly called Planned Parenthood his Holocaust museum.
“We publicly invited him to come to the museum and he publicly rejected our offer,” Kean said.
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