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On Oct. 31, Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, fans rallied together in support of the rapper to help him gain back his billionaire status.
West, who now performs under the moniker Ye, lost his hefty financial title after a series of antisemitic rants over the last month. A chunk of his fortune stemmed from his lucrative shoe deal with Adidas. But the company cut ties with the Chicago MC shortly after he made hurtful remarks about the Jewish community on Drink Champs.
“Make Kanye West A Billionaire Again” GoFundMe has already been taken down
On Monday, Ye fans banned together and created a GoFundMe campaign to help the Grammy-award-winner become “a billionaire again.”
According to The New York Post, one fundraiser has already been taken down, only making $5, but several more allegedly remain active.
Ye’s pockets have taken a massive hit from his chaotic behavior. The rapper lost over $2 billion dollars after he challenged Adidas to drop him during his since-deleted appearance on Drink Champs in October.
“I can say antisemitic sh*t and Adidas cannot drop me,” the 45-year-old celeb said with confidence. Sadly, Ye’s troubling comments came just weeks after he threatened to go “death con 3” on the Jewish community and just days before he shook up Paris Fashion Week with his eyebrow-raising “White Lives Matter” shirt.
In a statement, Adidas said that the rapper’s recent comments were “unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous.”
“They violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness,” the company added of their decision to part ways with the “Jesus Walks” producer.
Ye’s lucrative Adidas deal made up half of his fortune
Forbes estimated that the rapper has lost out on half of his fortune because of the severed deal. Ye had been working with Adidas since 2013 to release several sneakers under his popular Yeezy brand. The lucrative collaboration accounted for $1.5 billion of his net worth, the outlet reported. Now, that’s all gone.
Adidas will be taking a massive hit, too. The Washington Post noted that Kanye’s uber-expensive Yeezy products pulled in an estimated $2 billion a year for the company. That’s close to 10 percent of the shoe titan’s annual revenue. But the rapper left them no choice. For weeks, angry fans and people on social media had been begging the company to cut ties with the rapper because of his senseless behavior.
Without Adidas, Kanye’s net worth has now been reduced from $2 billion to around $400 million, Forbes reported. But Adidas wasn’t the only company to bid adieu from the famous MC.
Earlier this month, Gap severed ties with the problematic rap star. It was a bold move given that Ye’s popular Yeezy Gap Line racked in $1 billion in sales for the company when it first hit shelves. In 2021, Bloomberg estimated that about $970 million of the Hip-Hop mogul’s fortune was attributable to the massive deal.
Outside of fashion, Ye is facing a massive lawsuit from George Floyd’s family for the inappropriate comments he made about the slain Minnesotan’s death on Drink Champs. The future of the rapper’s school, Donda Academy is also up in the air. The California-based private school was closed shortly after Ye made headlines for his baffling rants.
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