More details about Kanye West‘s alleged exploitation of Yeezy staff members have been revealed in a new Rolling Stone report, in which multiple former employees claimed that Ye frequently exposed them to “hardcore” pornography while at work.
On Tuesday, former top Yeezy employees wrote an open letter to the executives on the board and the CEO of Adidas outlining several of West’s inappropriate actions.
Rolling Stone obtained a copy of the letter titled “The Truth About Yeezy: A Call to Action for Adidas Leadership,” which demanded that Adidas leadership address “the toxic and chaotic environment that Kanye West created” as well as Ye’s “very sick pattern of predacious behavior toward women.”
Staff members also claimed that Ye played his sex tapes for Yeezy team members in job interviews, shared intimate photos of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, discussed porn, and played other explicit videos at staff meetings.
“My wife just sent me this,” the rapper allegedly told a young staffer as he displayed a “very revealing and personal” photo of Kardashian on his phone during a job interview in 2018. “He showed me the video of Francesca Le, a buff porn star with a strap-on dildo fucking another girl in the ass,” another former staffer said. “He’s like, ‘What do you think of it?’ Not laughing at all.”
Ye also reportedly showed an explicit video of his ex-wife to the creative team that same year. In fact, according to the report, former employees believed the rapper-turned-fashion mogul used explicit content as a manipulation tactic that was used primarily on female employees.
“The oversexualized behavior has been consistent since the beginning,” said a former senior employee. “I don’t know that it ever went away.”
The letter stated, “The most troubling behavior that should have been flagged by the executive team very early in the partnership is his manipulative and fear-based approach to leading the team, all while trying to assert dominance over Adidas employees in closed rooms.”
“As much as we all would love to solely blame Kanye,” the letter continued, “the undeniable truth is that the Adidas executive team and the board have been huge enablers.”
A spokesperson for Adidas said in a statement: “Adidas does not tolerate hate speech and offensive behavior and therefore has terminated the Adidas Yeezy partnership. We have been and continue to be actively engaged in conversations with our employees about the events that lead [sic] to our decision to end the partnership. They have our full support, and as we’re working through the details of the termination, we have been clear that we want to keep our employees’ talent and skills within the organization.”
