Who is Jerry Lorenzo? Kanye calls out designer in lengthy post on fallout with Adidas over Yeezy merch

Kanye West called out designer Jerry Lorenzo, Adidas, and individuals he felt were insincere in their support for him via an Instagram post on January 7, 2025. In his statement, Ye expressed discontent over the search results for Yeezy.com, which showcased the Adidas website before the official site of the rapper's brand.

Addressing Jerry Lorenzo in his post, Kanye West mentioned:

"yall know Jerry was corny and disloyal for doing work with adidas after the way they handled things I still showed up to his show that was a copy of my Hollywood bowl show being the so called bigger man but I’m never doing that again for no one"

According to Business of Fashion, Jerry Lorenzo is the founder of a luxury streetwear label called Fear of God, which was established in 2013. The label garnered the support and interest of Kanye, Virgil Abloh, and Michele Alessandro. Jerry who hails from Sacramento, is the son of a former professional baseball player and coach Jerry Manuel.

In late 2020, Adidas and Jerry Lorenzo's Fear of God announced the Fear of God Athletics deal. Jerry was also appointed as the creative director of Adidas Basketball. However, in October 2022, Adidas terminated its partnership with Ye with "immediate effect" citing that the brand doesn't "tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech".

Despite the fallout between Kanye West and Adidas, Jerry Lorenzo continued working with Adidas and the first full collection from Fear of God Athletics dropped in November 2023.

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"You’re a 60 billion dollar company that froze my accounts"- Kanye West mentions in his post calling out Adidas

In reference to the search results for Yeezy, which display Adidas' website ahead of his official site, Kanye West asked members of the brand to stop making their moves to hold him back. Commenting on his terminated partnership with Adidas, Ye said:

"You’re a 60 billion dollar company that froze my accounts Now I’m back on my feet (no pun intended) and I’m not going to stand for this (no pun again) I did phenomenal work for you guys and because I stood up for myself yall tried to intimidate and oppress me"

Referring to his 2022 accusations against the sportswear company, Kanye said that everyone knows about his "major issues with Adidas because of design theft and oppression before “the tweet” side note."

Declaring that "It's Yeezy over everything", the rapper went ahead to call out people who took a picture next to him while they had their own clothing lines and agendas, acting like they were friends with Ye.

While Kanye West did not mention the people he was talking about, he claimed that the people in question didn't want to work for him and rather wanted to use him to get more money than they'd get elsewhere. The rapper added that these people were happy when Ye didn't accomplish what he was working toward with them.

Additionally, the rapper mentioned Yeezy's progress after its terminated partnership with Adidas stating that the "Yeezy $20 dollar price is burning the game to the ground". Ye said that the Yeezy website made 100 million dollars in 2024 with the website being up for only 6 months. Kanye West added that he took the brand's website down for the 6th month to get control over his Shopify accounts.

The rapper said that despite people trying to make him believe he couldn't manage the brand by himself, Yeezy sold more than a million pairs of pods and that he has been working on ten different styles for the last 2 years. Ye ended his post by stating:

"It’s Yeezy for the people Everything else was in the way"

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While Jerry Lorenzo hasn't commented on Kanye West's discontent over his continued collaboration with Adidas, he offered his perspective on working with Ye during an October 2023 interview with The Wall Street Journal. At the time, Jerry said that anyone who knew Ye would be able to tell that it was a tough relationship to maintain.