Kanye Launching New Clothing Line, Working with Q-Tip and Rick Rubin
A week after Kanye West let it slip that he would be partnering with Adidas, the sneaker giant has confirmed the news.
Details haven’t been released yet, as Billboard reports, but the apparel company did offer a statement. “For 2014, we welcome to the Adidas family one of the most influential cultural icons of this generation, Kanye West,” it read. “Well known for breaking boundaries across music, film and design and partnering with our history in streetwear culture and leading innovations in sport, we look forward to creating a new chapter.”
West unofficially announced the partnership during an interview with Hot 97’s Angie Martinez, adding that he hoped his products would be on shelves by fall 2014. The deal is not particularly surprising, considering West has been bashing Adidas’ rival Nike lately; the rapper said the company refused to offer him royalties and continually skirted the release of his Red October shoes, the follow-up to his Air Yeezys.
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“The old me without a daughter might have taken the Nike deal ’cause I just love Nike so much,” West said at the time. “But the new me with a daughter takes the Adidas deal because I have royalties and I have to provide for my family.”
Nike wasn’t the only clothing and design company to receive West’s wrath in the rapper’s recent string of radio interviews. West aired out his many grievances against industry titans like Louis Vuitton and Yves Saint Laurent, whom he claimed were marginalizing him in his efforts to enter the fashion world despite his successes elsewhere.
In other Yeezy news, A Tribe Called Quest‘s Q-Tip told Life and Times that he and Rick Rubin are producing the follow-up to West’s Yeezus, which the rapper previously said he aims to have out by next summer. Q-Tip has worked with West in the past, most notably on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Tribe briefly reunited for two special shows in New York as part of West’s ongoing Yeezus tour.