YouTube Music chief and record industry veteran Lyor Cohen has penned an open letter to Kanye West following the rapper’s latest rampage of racist and antisemitic statements. It comes as another round of business partners cut ties with West, and yet another former employee files a lawsuit accusing him of discrimination and harassment in the workplace.
Addressing West directly, Cohen says that the rapper’s creative talents “could be used to heal and inspire, to bridge divides and promote understanding”, but instead “you’ve chosen a path that sows discord and perpetuates harmful stereotypes”.
“I am deeply disappointed and troubled by your recent actions involving the use of Nazi symbols and antisemitic rhetoric”, Cohen adds. “Your words and actions are not only offensive but triggering to all decent people who recognise the horrors of the Holocaust and the suffering of millions”.
The latest West controversies include a rant on X in which he again praised Hitler and the Nazis, in among various antisemitic statements, and slurs against LGBTQ+ and disabled people. Then, over the weekend, he ran adverts during the Super Bowl directing people to his Yeezy online store where he was promoting t-shirts featuring a swastika symbol.
That store was powered by e-commerce platform Shopify, which yesterday announced it had cut off the rapper’s account. In a statement the e-commerce company said, “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms, so we removed them from Shopify”.
Many of West’s business partners in the music industry stopped working with the rapper during that earlier onslaught of antisemitic comments in 2022, comments that also led to the axing of his mega-bucks alliance with sportswear brand Adidas.
Last week’s comments have lost West another music industry business partner, the independent talent agency 33 & West, which had been working with the rapper for about a year. His agent Daniel McCartney wrote on Instagram on Monday, “Effective immediately, I’m no longer representing Ye (f/k/a Kanye West) due to his harmful and hateful remarks that neither myself nor 33 & West can stand for”.
Since the 2022 meltdown and the more recent controversies involving West, there has been a flurry of lawsuits filed with the US courts by people who previously worked for his companies, most of which describe in detail the rapper’s racism and antisemitism, and other misconduct in the workplace.
Another such lawsuit was filed with the courts in California this week by a woman who previously had a marketing role at Yeezy. Recalling her time working for West, the marketing exec says in her lawsuit, “he is a self-proclaimed ‘nazi’, a person who has openly called himself ‘Hitler’, a boss who called his female employee a ‘bitch’ and ‘ugly’”.
Cohen’s open letter concludes by urging West to take a different path. “The Jewish and black experiences share a rich history of collaboration and mutual support, particularly in the music industry”, the former Def Jam boss notes.
“From the early days of jazz and blues to the groundbreaking work of Motown and beyond, our communities have enriched each other through music and culture”, he goes on. “I urge you to reflect on this shared legacy and use your platform to build upon the love and understanding that have always existed between our communities”.