Adidas has placed its partnership with rapper and fashion designer Ye under review, according to multiple outlets.
“After repeated efforts to privately resolve the situation, we have taken the decision to place the partnership under review. We will continue to co-manage the current product during this period,” the company said in a statement, according to CNBC, which first reported the news.
The retail company has worked with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, on his brand Yeezy since 2013. Over the years, the rapper and designer has become critical of Adidas and claimed they have been stealing his designs — an accusation he echoed in a Thursday Instagram post.
“F**K ADIDAS I AM ADIDAS,” Ye wrote on Instagram.
The news of the review comes about a month after Ye terminated his work with Gap, and days after he sparked backlash by wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt at his Yeezy fashion show in Paris.
The lawyer for Wanda Cooper Jones, the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was killed while jogging in Georgia in February 2020, slammed the stunt in a statement.
“As a result of his display ‘White Lives Matter’ started trending in the U.S., which would direct support and legitimize extremist behavior, [much] like the behavior that took the life of her son,” Cooper-Jones’s lawyer Lee Merritt said in a statement to Rolling Stone.
Merritt added, “That is the thing that Wanda and families like hers continue to fight against.”