Earlier this year, a great many music and pop culture fans breathed a shared sigh of relief as Kanye West cleared his Instagram after weeks of lashing out at his ex Kim Kardashian and her then-boyfriend Pete Davidson, as well as anyone who tried to defend either of them. For a while, it seemed as though he’d calmed down enough to take rational stock of his behavior, realize he was wrong, and turn over his password to someone else.
Unfortunately, it looks like he didn’t do that last bit and he’s ramped up again, this time setting his sights on business partners like Adidas and Gap. He’s accused Adidas of “stealing” his designs — which are actually teardowns of his hero kicks like the Yeezy Boost and Yeezy Slide — and specifically called out soon-to-be former CEO Kasper Rørsted, celebrating Rørsted’s impending departure with a bad joke on Instagram. Now, he’s got a new target: Rørsted’s apparent successor, Adidas Senior Vice President, and General Manager, Daniel Cherry.
And, as with so many of his outlandish posts in the past, there’s a collateral recipient of his abuse in Kid Cudi, who Kanye can’t seem to stop pulling into his various feuds despite over a decade’s worth of collaborations between the two. This time, he’s appropriated a photo of Kid Cudi wearing a wedding dress at the CFDA Fashion Awards in late 2021, doing a poor cut-and-paste job to attach Cherry’s head to Cudi’s designer Eli Russell Linnetz, with whom he held hands on the event’s red carpet. West asked his fans to photoshop an Adidas logo onto Cudi’s dress, and they were only too happy to oblige.
The suggestion is clear and about as trashy as we’ve seen Kanye get lately. It’s kind of sad to see a guy who once confronted his internalized homophobia in a 2005 interview with MTV News dive headfirst into that homophobia because he didn’t read his contract (again). Let’s just hope he manages to get the help he needs when he inevitably implodes again, and this time, someone please, change the man’s passwords.