After a long exile from the Twitter-verse, Kanye West made a brief return to the platform, before deleting his account once again.
Love him or hate him (believe me, there’s many in both camps) when Yeezus speaks, everyone goes into a hush silence and listens to him before trying to decipher what he’s just told us.
Despite vowing to never to return to Twitter – which has got him into trouble more than once, not that he probably cares – The College Dropout decided to make a brief, albeit memorable, return.
This time around, he decided to call out sportswear giants Nike for supposedly copying one of his sneaker designs – trainers if you insist on being British about the whole thing.
Taking to Twitter, before quickly deleting the post and deactivating his account (again), West called out Nike after they released images of their newly revamped Air Monarchs, which’ll be dropping April 19.
The rapper, who’s a noted fashionista, posted a picture of the sneaker, dubbed the Nike M2K Techno, with the caption ‘Yeezy 700 vibes’, followed by the facepalm and laughing emojis.
While it’s hard to disseminate what Ye’s thinking, it appears he’s calling out the international sports brand for ‘taxing’ his Adidas Yeezy 700 silhouette.
The relationship between the iconic rapper, Nike and Adidas is a storied one, riddled with politics, alleged corporate espionage, cloak-and-dagger recruitment and outright pettiness. Before Kanye West became part of the three-stripes family he was very much in bed with Nike.
He released two sets of sneakers with the iconic brand, the Yeezy 1 and 2s. Unfortunately, West grew frustrated with Nike – the relationship soured and he jumped over to their rivals.
Since his involvement with Adidas, their relationship has been fruitful, as his collection of sneakers and clothing has sold out in stores across the globe.
It could be argued there’s a similarity between the Yeezy 700’s and Nike’s new-look Air Monarchs (popularly known in the community as the ultimate dad-sneaker), but it appears Ye is forgetting his sneaker history.
The Air Monarch has been out for a long time now, way before Yeezy 700’s ever hit the design board.
One could also argue Adidas’ Yeezy Boost 350s are a straight rip-off of the Nike Roshe Runs – a sneaker which has since been lambasted in the sneaker community, but that’s the fickle nature of sneaker-heads I guess?
Recently, West has teased hip-hop fans with hints he might be working on a new album and if true, it’ll be a follow up to the critically acclaimed The Life of Pablo, which was released in 2016.
Furthermore, according to his interior designer, Axel Vervoordt, West is also in the process of writing a book titled Break the Simulation.
According to Vervoordt’s interview with West for Pret-a-Reporter, the eccentric rapper told the Belgian designer he’s writing ‘a philosophy book’.
West told Vervoort:
I’ve got a concept about photographs, and I’m on the fence about photographs—about human beings being obsessed with photographs – because it takes you out of the now and transports you into the past or transports you into the future.
It can be used to document, but a lot of times it overtakes [people]. People dwell too much in the memories.
People always wanna hear the history of something, which is important, but I think there’s too much of an importance put on history.
A book on the philosophy of Kanye West written by the man himself? Sign me up.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via stories@unilad.co.uk
