Adidas ends partnership with Kanye West over racist remarks

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Following weeks of pressure from human rights activists, German multinational company Adidas has made the decision to sever its ties with rapper Kanye West, following some controversial remarks he has made over the past months.

Adidas, which ended an arrangement with the rapper that has produced the popular Yeezy sneakers collection, has succumbed to a weeks-long pressure campaign, following in the path of other businesses that have also severed ties with West.

Famous retailer, Gap, had ended its partnership with West in September. The rapper had recently said in a podcast that he was key to Adidas's success, commenting: “I can say anti-Semitic things and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what?”

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He had appeared earlier in September at his Yzy fashion show in Paris wearing a White Lives Matter shirt, tweeting a week later that he was planning to go  “death con [sic] 3 on Jewish people.”

The sweatshirts were called "deeply offensive, violent and dangerous" by figures in the fashion community, including British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful, New York Times director and chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, and Vogue contributing editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson - not to mention Hollywood figures and social media users as well. 

Kanye told Fox News' Tucker Carlson in an interview on October 6 that the aim of the shirt was to relay an obvious message as he called the backlash he's received "a setup."

"The answer to why I wrote 'White Lives Matter' on a shirt is because they do," Ye said. "It’s the obvious thing" as he went on to label his detractors as "practically made in a laboratory."