Kanye West Admits Sway Calloway was Right About Yeezy a Decade Later

Kanye West sat down with Good Morning America’s Linsey Davis to talk about Kim Kardashian, Donda Academy and his recent Yeezy legal battles with Adidas and Gap.

Earlier this month, West and his legal team ended the decade-long Yeezy-Gap relationship over a breach of contract, claiming the retailer was too slow in opening agreed-upon stores and making items available at brick-and-mortar locations. The partnership had officially began in 2020, with product becoming available in 2021. West also told Bloomberg that he plans to exit his corporate partnership contracts with Adidas.

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“It’s time for me to go it alone,” Ye told the outlet.

When Davis asked West about how he plans to move forward in the fashion industry now, he replied, “We’ve got some new lawyers. We really had to level up and show them — really show them who’s the new boss in town.”

Davis pulled up a 2013 an interview with Sway Calloway on Shade 45’s Sway in the Morning, where Kanye compared himself to Andy Warhol and Shakespeare — the “number one most impactful artist of our generation,” he said — after companies like Nike wouldn’t invest in his projects.

It was at this time that Sway encouraged Kanye to go direct to the consumer with Yeezy: “Why don’t you empower yourself and don’t need them [sic] and do it yourself?”

A visibly agitated Kanye yelled back, “How, Sway? You ain’t got the answers, man. You ain’t got the answers … I been doing this more than you … You ain’t spent $13 million of your own money trying to empower yourself.”

Looking back on that interview now with Davis, almost 10 years later, Kanye said, “You know what? I will go ahead and say Sway had the answer.”