According to a recently released Rolling Stone article on November 9, Kanye West’s Yeezy company employees have been dealing with the rapper’s stormy temperament. One ex-employee talked about an astounding 2015 incident where Ye asked for music suggestions to play while they worked.
The “Donda” rapper singled out the staff member, and when he mentioned Drake as a suggestion, he was fired the very next day.
“I thought, ‘Oh, he’s a rapper. I should probably mention some rap,'” the unnamed staff member said, deciding to choose well-known rapper Drake. “Big mistake—the next day, I was fired.”
This isn’t the only example of Kanye West firing his staff on what seems like flippant whims. Another Yeezy executive spoke about a time when someone was reprimanded for wearing a yellow sweater.
Ye allegedly fired them immediately with the explanation, “dress for the palette, or you dress in black,” It seems to be a common occurrence since one creative said that they were kicked out of their own product review for wearing a gray t-shirt.
Rolling Stone attempted to figure out why Ye was such an unpredictable boss, and an employee decided that it was because of the man’s perpetual mistrust of those around him.
“The biggest issue is that he doesn’t appear to have high-level operational people that he trusts,” a contractor explained. “Without the operational backbone, no company can really exist for a super long time. You can’t build a multi-billion-dollar brand without an operations director who stays on the job for more than six months. He needs professionals that don’t give a shit that he’s Kanye West.” Another employee agreed and said, “Everyone’s always on the verge of losing their job, so the dynamics are total chaos. He doesn’t necessarily have people that he can trust around him.”
The habit has made for a toxic work environment for many working at Yeezy, with most describing the job as one of the most stressful they’ve ever had in their professional career.
“Nothing has ever compared to the amount of chaos, the amount of stress and [the amount of] anxiety you go through working for Yeezy,” an Adidas x Yeezy senior team member told the outlet. Another one described working with “somebody with that much vision and that much money” as “Everything he does is a giant mess of vacuuming up all of people’s time—just consuming their entire lives, and then the output just gets left on the side of the road somewhere.”
