A lot of words have been spilled about Kanye West, but these days Ye gets little credit for when he’s actually right. To be fair, that’s because Kanye West routinely says inflammatory, damaging, hurtful things, and we mean really inflammatory. But occasionally he has a take so spot-on that it shows flashes of brilliance and truth, like when he’s pointing out the often predatory and unbalanced relationship between record labels and artists, or when he’s storming the stage to proclaim that Beyonce deserved the VMA for Best Female Music Video over Taylor Swift (though to MTV’s credit, they recognized Bey’s brilliance and gave her the Video of the Year award).
In his latest Twitter rant, West had some harsh words for PUMA and threatened to start redesigning the sneakers and bring the brand back to Adidas tweeting.
“I am the head of Adidas…” [he’s not -ed] “I will bring adidas and puma back together and bring me and jay back together…” before calling all PUMA designs ’embarrassingly trash’ and saying he’d start personally designing them.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1306998712556756992
To Ye’s credit, he’s absolutely right — with a few exceptions, PUMA has had a disappointing output for years now while other brands that were once ignored by the streetwear community, like Reebok and FILA, have found their footing in modern fits. If that bit about him and Jay-Z seems like random rambling, it’s actually not. Ye is drawing a parallel between himself and his “brother” Jay-Z, and Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, the two real-life brothers who started Adidas and PUMA respectively, only to become fierce rivals who had to be buried at opposite ends of their hometown.
We’ve long been advocates of Kanye West, fashion designer, and have made the case repeatedly that he should give up music (and politics) for good and stick to the world of sneakers, where he’s still doing his best work. Before you write this off as just another rant, remember that this dude is still actually running for president and while he’s not exactly the “head of Adidas” he does hold considerable sway for keeping the brand competitive with Nike via his Yeezy line.
PUMA isn’t without its fans though, which were quick to remind Kanye of some of his designer missteps on Twitter.
Kanye West: PUMAS DESIGNS ARE TRASH!
Also Kanye: pic.twitter.com/nvdt814xKJ
— mr. rusty (@thekidbobchills) September 18, 2020
https://twitter.com/MarkTanTheGOAT/status/1307012100552708096
https://twitter.com/lookslikefenty/status/1306532200397991938
By this time next year, we might be ranking some Yeezy Pumas — a much better outcome for sneakerheads and streetwear fans than Kanye as the US President would be.