Kanye West has now seen his music impacted by his recent controversial statements, as Apple Music has removed access to at least a portion of his catalog from its platform.
As of Thursday (October 27), the streaming service’s “Kanye West Essentials” playlist was no longer accessible, though Ye’s catalog remains available to users. Apple Music has not issued a statement about the removal of the playlist or the future of the company’s relationship with Ye.
Spotify, on the other hand, has stated that it will not be removing any of his music from its service, as Kanye’s artistic output itself has not violated any of its hate speech policies. The company’s CEO Daniel Ek, who called the comments Kanye West has made in recent interviews “awful,” told Reuters that, if similar comments were accessible on Spotify via podcast interviews, for example, his team would take a different approach.
“It’s really just his music, and his music doesn’t violate our policy,” Ek said, “It’s up to his label, if they want to take action or not.”
The label in question would be Def Jam, through which Kanye West released 10 of his 11 solo albums; his collaborations with JAY-Z and Kid Cudi; and the 2012 G.O.O.D. Music compilation album Cruel Summer. While the label owns the copyrights to all of Ye’s recordings between 2002 and 2016, a spokesperson for Def Jam told The Hollywood Reporter that their contract ended with the 2021 release of Donda.
“Def Jam’s relationship with Ye as a recording artist, Def Jam’s partnership with the GOOD Music label venture and Ye’s merchandise agreement with Bravado all ended in 2021,” the label said in a statement. “There is no place for antisemitism in our society. We are deeply committed to combating antisemitism and every other form of prejudice.”
By seemingly distancing itself from Kanye West, Apple Music joins a growing list of companies and entities to have severed ties with the artist following antisemitic statements made on interviews with Drink Champs and Piers Morgan Uncensored.
First to jump ship was Balenciaga and its parent company Kering who, despite having had Kanye open their Paris Fashion Week show earlier this month, said that as of October 21, “Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist.”
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adidas followed suit, announcing earlier this week that the company had decided to “terminate the partnership with Ye immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products and stop all payments to Ye and his companies.”
In a statement, the company added: “Ye’s 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. adidas will stop the adidas Yeezy business with immediate effect.”
NFL star Aaron Donald and the Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown terminated their relationship with Donda Sports on the same day.
The professional hits all came within days of a new $250 million lawsuit being filed by the family of George Floyd, over Kanye declaring that Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose and not at the hands of Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin.
First they attack and tarnish your reputation, then they deplete your finances, and finally they come for your freedom (jail time) or your life (murder/suicide). Stay strong Ye!
Lol, get the fuck outta here! Stop tryna make a martyr out of this buffoon. Y’all Stanye’s some straight weirdos.
Kanye has too many yes men around. He needs a real homie to tell him to shut the f**k up and stay off the internet and TV for a good 6 months. His small dick energy is destroying everything he ever worked hard for!!!
You can say about Kanye what you want but at least he gives all those news and gossip pages what they want，also to those social media junkies.
Look，I don’t know how serious he is about what he says and I think he doesn’t always talk total bullshit and some of it is at least discuss worthy. At the end of the day I don’t even really care about it. Who needs any of these clowns to save them?
It’s still hilarious to see that outrage by all of these “offended” people who always have their ‘” things you have to be offended about to not being cancelled” list next to their computer. What a time to be alive….
Yet I can still play R. Kelly bump and grind all I want. Sick place we live.
If you can’t tell the difference, you are one dumb mofo….. R Kelly did a crime, like 50000 other artists you can still download stuff from. Kanye is actively threatening people and inciting hate almost every single day on social media and feeding a whole movement of hate. He’s been getting away with this for YEARS and now he finally gets cancelled, as he should be. people lost their livelyhood for saying a lot less than koonye has on social media. Now his bipolar bigoted dumb @ss gets footed the bill for all his horseshiat. you call that sick? I call that LONG OVERDUE
Literally 90% of rappers threaten and incite violence, he’s threatening the wrong people
Hahaha!
Just goes to show the Illuminati is real.
If he never put on the MAGA hat, they’d be worried about him and excusing his mental illness. Shows how fucked we are and how fake the compassion for mental illness really is
If he never put on the “red” hat, they’d be worried about him and excusing his mental illness. Shows how fucked we are and how fake the compassion for mental illness really is