Kasper Rørsted, the CEO of the German clothing brand, adidas, recently spoke out regarding the controversial comments Kanye West made on Twitter. Specifically, the interview Kasper was involved in was originally called to focus on the company’s recent earnings, however, after various journalists carried on pushing the CEO for a response – even after he initially ignored the queries – he finally spoke out, saying: “there are clearly some comments we don’t support.”
Furthermore, he continued to discuss how the company has planned to talk with Kanye regarding his comments but then stressed how important the artist is to the company’s future, going on to give a straight up “no” when questioned whether adidas had discussed the idea of dropping the artist. As for what West’s comments were, the American rapper stated:
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years . . . For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.” further adding: “You were there for 400 years, and it’s all of y’all. It’s like we’re mentally imprisoned.” After this the Chicago rapper, of course, experienced some backlash, although instead of backing down Kanye tried to reiterate his point, stating: “To make myself clear, of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will,” he tweeted. “My point is for us to have stayed in that position, even though the numbers were on our side, means that we were mentally enslaved.” Kanye added, “The reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can’t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought. It was just an idea.”