Kanye West’s partnership with Adidas was dogged by scandal for YEARS: Company ignored complaints about him drawing a swastika and his fixation on Hitler while giving him access to annual $100M slush fund

Kanye West was obsessed by Adolf Hitler long before the troubled rapper went public with anti-Semitic comments in 2022 yet Adidas executives ignored his disturbing behavior while giving him access to a $100 million-a-year slush fund, according to a jaw-dropping new report.

West’s relationship with Adidas, thought to be nearly as lucrative as Nike’s decades-long partnership with Michael Jordan, is brought under the spotlight in a New York Times report where the sportswear giant is accused of turning a blind eye to West’s fascination with Hitler and the Nazis.

Among the allegations are that in 2018, West, 46, asked a Jewish company executive to kiss a picture of Adolf Hitler every day as a way to show unconditional love and drawing a swastika on a pair of sneakers during a visit to Adidas’ headquarters in Germany.

The article notes that around the time that West launched his doomed presidential campaign and his now-shuttered Christian school, Adidas agreed to pay him $100 million-a-year ‘that he could spend with little oversight.’

Other allegations also resurface in the report, including that West would force employees to watch pornography at the office.

Almost a year ago, Adidas ended a major partnership with West over his statements, discontinued West’s line of Yeezy shoes and moved up the planned departure of its CEO.

In a statement at that time, the company said it ‘does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech.’

It added his ‘recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.’

Three years after West drew a swastika on the sneakers, Adidas extended its deal with the Life of Pablo rapper. The report alleges that executives even knew that West was planning to name an album after Hitler but later settled on the name Ye.

West is accused of showering praise on Hitler calling him a ‘master marketer’ and lauded his control of the media.

Jon Wexler, then Adidas’s global director of entertainment and influencer marketing, who a hugely important part of bringing West on board with the company, said that West told him hang a picture of Hitler in his kitchen and kiss it every morning.

Wexler said that the rapper made that remark after the two had an argument related to West’s views on slavery.

The Times’ report reiterates that allegations that West was ‘angry’ at the offices of his Yeezy brand and that he would regularly make Sєxually crude comments to ‘staff. He’s also accused of drinking while at the offices.

During one exchange, West told Eric Liedtke, Adidas’ global brand manager, that he was forced to pay off a former employee millions because of the rapper’s constant Hitler references.

In another section of the article, it’s revealed that members of the team at Adidas that worked directly with West were given a free subscription to a meditation app, had group therapy sessions and had a member of the human resources team ᴀssigned to them.

The piece gone on to say that executives started a Yzy Hotline text group to discuss the problems they had working with him. In one exchange, they discussed taking certain aspects of the business away from his control.