In town for the New York leg of his Yeezus tour, Kanye West confirmed rumors of a hush-hush collaboration with Adidas on Angie Martininez's long-running Hot 97 radio show, where he appeared with fiancée Kim Kardashian. Citing his desire to have royalties on his hysteria-causing Air Yeezys, Kanye publicly severed ties with Nike. With tons of hype still surrounding his unreleased Air Yeezy II, the Red Octobers, there is still no release date, but it seems possible that the next Kanye shoes to actually hit the light of day will be Adidas, not Nike. Watch highlights above, read quotes from the interview below, plus watch a video of Kim and Kanye talking about their relationship. (Via MissInfo)
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.
