Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has faced a wave of backlash in the past week after a string of antisemitic and otherwise offensive comments on the social media platform X.
Last week, Ye made a return to social media, which quickly descended into him sharing a string of antisemitic posts, including praise for Adolf Hitler and declaring himself to be a Nazi.
Following this, he stripped every item from his online Yeezy shop apart from a t-shirt emblazoned with a swastika, and a slogan alluding to Hitler’s Nazi party.
The online retail platform Shopify subsequently made the decision to pull Ye’s shop from its service, stating: “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms.”
Since then, it’s also been confirmed that Ye’s agent Daniel McCartney has dropped the Grammy-winning musician “due to his harmful and hateful remarks” which he said that neither “myself nor 33 & West [Ye’s former agency] can stand for”.
Prior to his and his wife Bianca Censori’s headline-grabbing appearance at the Grammys earlier this month, Ye had been out of the spotlight for some time, off the back of several high-profile scandals.
These included numerous past antisemitic comments, as well as the decision to wear a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt to a fashion show in 2022 and the inclusion of Marilyn Manson as part of a stunt to promote his album, Donda.
In the wake of Ye’s most recent antisemitic comments, X owner Elon Musk faced pressure – including from former Friends actor David Schwimmer – to ban the Blood On The Leaves rapper from the social media platform altogether.
While initially it looked like Ye had been removed from the site, his account now appears to be live on X at the time of writing.