A Kanye West fan has created a GoFundMe page to help the artist to recover the billionaire status. Yet dozens of others have responded creating their own crowdfunding pages to become billionaires instead of the controversial star.
Over the past week, dozens of pages have been created that can be found in a search for ‘Billionaire Kanye’ on the American for-profit crowdfunding platform. It all started when a GoFundMe page titled ‘Make Kanye West a billionaire again’was placed soliciting donations to help the 45-year-old star regain billionaire status after Forbes set his net worth at $400 million after losing partnerships with Adidas and Gap.
The page was removed, along with a few more similar ones, presumably due to violations of the site’s terms of service, but according to reports, they didn’t raise too much money before coming to an end. GoFundMe allows people to raise money for events ranging from ccelebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances such as accidents and illnesses.
This comes days after Ye claimed that lost $2 billion in a single day, as companies continued to cut ties with the rapper following his anti-Semitic comments. The rapper was embarrassingly escorted out of Skechers headquarters on Wednesday after showing up unannounced to introduce his Yeezy brand a day after Adidas dropped him.
Skechers representatives said in a statement: “Given that Ye was involved in unauthorized filming, two Skechers executives escorted him and his group out of the building after a brief conversation. Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West. We condemn his recent divisive comments and do not tolerate anti-Semitism or any other form of hate speech. The Company would like to emphasize again that West showed up unannounced and uninvited at Skechers corporate offices.”
The rapper’s removal from the shoe brand’s office comes just hours after Adidas announced it will no longer sell Yeezy products. Management said it will sell the items under its own brand in early 2023, according to analysts.
Footwear retailer Foot Locker said they “would not endorse any future Yeezy product drops, and we have instructed our retail operators to remove any existing products from our shelves and digital sites.”
The termination of the Adidas deal has pushed Ye out of the ranks of billionaires, according to wealth tracker Forbes. Ye is now worth a comparatively paltry $400 million, which Forbes estimates comes from real estate, cash, his music catalog and a five percent stake in ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s shapewear firm, Skims.
But as corporations around the world break deals with Ye, streaming music service Spotify said it would not remove the rapper’s music unless requested by his label. (E)