Kanye just gave a lecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where the college dropout also received an honorary doctorate), and had plenty to say about his sneaker collaborations both old and new.
In true Kanye fashion, he used his platform to take shots at Nike, which he previously had two signature sneakers with. "And I still left them, because they weren’t giving me the opportunity to grow. They were working off an old business model, and Phil Knight was somewhere on an island," he said. "And then, Mark Parker would go and find people who I collaborated with years before, and try to do collaborations with them to seem cool, and as you see, Nike hasn’t done like, one cool thing this year."
He also explains that, "So when it was time to do the adidas collection, and I left Nike because they refused to give me a percentage because I was not an athlete—I don’t have a NDA that says I can’t say this even though it seems wrong to say out loud—I left Nike because they refused to give me a percentage, they also offered me $4 million a year to stay, which is an unknown thing but I’m sure it’ll show up on Hypebeast tomorrow."
Kanye goes on to plug the adidas Energy Boost ESMs and explains why he's been wearing them everywhere, saying, "These are just adidas that are fresh, they're not even my shoes. I don't even get paid to wear 'em."
Looks like he's happy where he's at.
