Kanye West has spent the past several weeks agitating against his business partners at Gap and now accuses the company of violating their contract with him in a letter sent to the company by his lawyer. According to CNBC, Kanye now wants to terminate the deal altogether, despite having four years left to go on the original term of the partnership. The main sticking point, according to West’s lawyer Nicholas Gravante, is the distribution of Yeezy products by the second half of 2021 and the creation of dedicated Yeezy Gap stores.
Per the original deal, Yeezy would be solely owned by Kanye, who would receive royalties and equity based on the sales. Pending the sales meeting certain targets, Yeezy stood to earn up to 8.5 million shares, with some sources valuing the partnership at nearly $1 billion. Although some Yeezy products were made available in Gap’s Times Square store in New York, Ye’s lawyers claim that they don’t count toward the terms of the partnership because they were a collaboration with Balenciaga — a separate deal altogether.
When the deal was signed with Yeezy back in 2020, Gap believed that the famous rap star’s cosign would boost slumping sales, but the quarterly earnings report released this August revealed disappointing results for the first half of 2022. Earlier this month, Kanye said he planned to continue the Yeezy apparel brand without Gap once the contract expired, but now it appears he’s trying to force that to happen sooner rather than later.
