On Kanye West's latest stop on his endlessly entertaining Yeezus publicity tour, he publicly apologized to mega sports brand and former business partner, Nike, after making a series of not-so-nice remarks about the company.
In an interview with TallBoy.us, Yeezy went to great lengths to let Nike know he's super duper sorry.
"I’m still gonna do music but I really do feel honored to have had the chance to blow Yeezy up with Nike and I really appreciate everything they did for me," he said.
"I’m not knocking them on the way out or burning no bridges, you know, I apologize for my frustration earlier. I just think it’s time. It’s go time. It’s turn up time."
Unfortunately for West, the Nike bridge is likely already smoldering.
In an on-air interview last week with Hot 97's Angie Martinez, the "Bound 2" rapper took the brand to task for being chintzy over royalties for his Nike Air Yeezy kicks.
"I said, 'Well I need royalties.' It's not even like I have a joint venture. At least give me some royalties. Michael Jordan has 5 percent and that business is $2 billion. He makes a $100 million dollars a year off of 5 percent royalties," West said.
"Nike told me, 'We can’t give you royalties because you're not a professional athlete.' I told them, 'I go to the Garden and play one-on-no one. I'm a performance athlete.'"
'Ye then revealed that he would be jumping ship and taking his beloved red shoes over to competitor, Adidas, because he has a family now and stuff. He explained:
"The old me, without a daughter, would have taken the Nike deal because I just love Nikes so much.
"But the new me, with a daughter, takes the Adidas deal because I have royalties and I have to provide for my family."
Speaking of his deal with Adidas, although Kanye laid the Nike apologies on thick, he also revealed in the TallBoy interview that he is still going forward with the transition.
"It just feels good to be able to create more, create product that I can control the pricing on," he said. "That I can do quality control on. I feel very comfortable to have a great partner backing my ideas and allowing me to think and be creative and giving me that shot.
"The same way Dame [Dash] gave me that record deal ten years ago and gave me a shot, I was able to do something creative with it. This is a new opportunity for me. I feel like I got a new family, fiancee, child…I feel like I got a new creative outlet."
New creative outlets are always good—even though we prefer knitting and soapmaking over major corporate deal making.
And as far as the Nike apology goes, we're guessing Kanye realized he's going to need all the support he can get on his quest to become bigger than Wal-Mart.
