Fallout for Kanye West continues, now in Miami. Rapper just got slapped with a lawsuit
The fallout continues for Kanye West — in Miami.
In the wake of the rapper’s egregious anti-Semitic comments on social media, major brands including Adidas, Balenciaga and Gap have severed ties with him.
“I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” West inexplicably tweeted on Oct. 9, and then things began to quickly unravel.
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Celebs like Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Silverman and Howard Stern publicly denounced him. Huge companies he’s worked with for years severed ties. His agent dropped him. Skechers kicked him out of its Los Angeles corporate offices when he apparently showed up unannounced and uninvited.
Now West is being sued in the Magic City for breach of contract. Kim Kardashian’s ex apparently did Surface Area showroom in the Design District dirty. The “gallery, retail space, content studio and activation space” claims in a suit filed on Monday in Florida’s Southern District Court that West never paid the $145,813 owed.
In documents reviewed by the Miami Herald, the “Gold Digger” artist reportedly reserved the space for roughly a month as a recording studio back in January, but then allegedly pulled out of the deal and stiffed these folks.
The invoice included a daily rental fee, purchase of office chairs, home accessories and sound gear as well as time billed for customizing the space to Ye’s “desires, specifications and color scheme.”
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Surface employees basically turned the entire place upside down, relocating furniture, equipment and more than 20 pieces of art, which are worth nearly $50 million, the documents claim.
“My client pulled off what was essentially an overnight transformation of its art studio into a recording studio for Ye and accompanying artists,” says Jonathan Smulevich, a local lawyer at Lowy and Cook, representing Surface Area’s parent company Surface Media. “In doing so, no request was too big or too small — Ye asked, and they delivered — and my client incurred significant costs and expenses to deliver.”
The amount the veteran chart topper, 45, allegedly owes is small beans for him, but money may be running dry quickly. Due to this horrific scandal that does not seem to be dying down in the least, West no longer has billionaire status, according to Forbes.
Another slight hitch: West does not currently have representation. The Atlanta native’s law firm Brown Rudnick — which famously won Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard — is no longer working with him since the controversy.
Ye did catch one break, amid this disaster: TMZ reports that George Floyd’s family has decided not to slap him with a $250 million lawsuit after West claimed on a since-deleted Revolt podcast that the Minneapolis man died from fentanyl, not the actions of former police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of Floyd’s murder.
A cease and desist letter apparently did the trick.
Amanda Rosa contributed to this report.
