Kanye West Announces Sneaker Deal With adidas

We’ve heard rumblings for a while that Kanye West has been unhappy with Nike. And by “rumblings,” we mean on-stage rants, venting his frustrations on radio and mentioning to just about anyone who will listen that he’s unhappy with the way Nike has handled the Yeezy IIs—specifically, the release of the “Red October” colorway. The last straw? Nike reportedly refusing to pay ‘Ye royalties. So what did West do? Went and signed with the competition. We have no official word from adidas yet, but Kanye tells Hot 97 that he’s inking a deal with the three stripes. We contacted adidas, and for now they say they have “nothing to share.” Here’s what Yeezy told Hot 97, via Miss Info: “So then I start turning up in the BBC interview, so [Nike] said, ok cool, we’re gonna give you a bigger sandbox to play in. We’re gonna give you this amount right here to design, and two collections a year, and 30 skews — that’s the amount of items that you have. Would that make you happy, Kanye? And I said, well I need royalties. It’s not even like I have a joint venture. At least give me some royalties. Michael Jordan has 5%, that business is $2 billion. He makes a $100 million dollars a year off of 5% royalties. Nike told me we can’t give you royalties because you’re not a professional athlete. I told them, I go to the Garden and play one-on-NO-ONE. I’m a performance athlete. Did I really ANYTHING? YES! Did I really EVERYTHING. 100,000 percent. I’m 100,000 percent at all times. It’s people that work in offices trying to tell me how to think, when I got a better perspective. I live in Paris…So the old me, without a daughter, would have taken the Nike deal because I just love Nikes so much. But the new me, with a daughter, takes the adidas deal because I have royalties and I have to provide for my family…Angie: So that’s official, did you officially announce the adidas deal? Kanye: Whatever’s official, non-official, official, what y’all gonna see is… I am going to be the Tupac of product… I’ma be the first hip-hop designer, and because of that… I’ma be bigger than Walmart.”