As a result of the company that produced the Stem Player used to release Donda 2 ending their relationship, Kanye West’s business portfolio has taken a further hit.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Kano, the tech company that created the Stem Player, has already made new iterations of the gadget available for any musician to upload music to.
“I asked Kanye not to take the path he’s on,” said the company’s co-founder and CEO Alex Klein. “We’ve told him that we’re unable to work together while he’s putting out racial conspiracy theories. There’s no deal in place.”
Donda 2 would only be made available through the Stem Player, which Ye referred to as his “own platform,” instead of through regular models, as he had previously indicated.
The concept was to let listeners edit tunes by changing the bass, drums, vocals, samples, and other elements. However, it’s doubtful that fans anticipated that Donda 2 would only be offered in that manner.
Kano went on to sell 100,000 units of the $200 pre-loaded Donda 2 Stem Player. Over a billion songs have been remixed using the device, according to Klein, 90% of which have nothing to do with Ye.
Although Ye’s recent anti-Semitic remarks were ultimately what caused Kano to break up with the rapper, Klein claimed that problems existed between the two of them from the very beginning.
“Unfortunately, Kanye didn’t want to allow other musical artists onto the platform,” he explained. “This was a disagreement that we had trouble resolving.”
Kanye West offered to purchase Kano, a company that specializes in highly customizable tech products, in response to Klein’s reluctance to prevent other artists from using the platform. Alex Klein opened up about his ongoing discussions with Kanye West on various online platforms before disclosing his company’s choice to the LA Times.
He first revealed on Reddit that Ye, “tried to call me racist when I gently told him that attacking a whole race of people wasn’t good for him or Stem.” Earlier this month, Klein went into more detail during a Discord conversation.
“Good engineering is about having correct information and acting upon it,” he wrote. “At the end of the day, as long as what’s flowing through Ye is hatred towards a particular ethnic group … it’s gonna be very hard for us to collaborate creatively.”
Unfortunately, Kanye West and Alex Klein’s business will continue to be connected in at least one way: Ye and Kano are co-defendants in two copyright infringement lawsuits involving samples from Donda 2.
One lawsuit asserts that Ye’s “Flowers” contains an unlawful sample of the 1986 house music smash “Move Your Body,” which was made on behalf of the musician Marshall Jefferson. In the other case, Boogie Down Productions’ catalog manager Phase One Network sued KRS-One and DJ Scott La Rock for using the song “South Bronx” without permission.
On “Life of the Party,” which features Andre 3000, the Hip Hop classic is sampled.
In addition to snippets of Biggie’s “Hypnotize,” Herb & the Spices’ “Cannibal Cutie,” and a viral video of DMX comforting his daughter on an amusement park ride, the song more prominently samples The Dramatics’ 1975 song “I Was the Life of the Party.”
Ye’s failure to close the deal with Kano is just the most recent example of corporate backlash stemming from remarks made on social media and during interviews on shows like Drink Champs and Piers Morgan Uncensored. Less than 24 hours after its debut, REVOLT decided to remove the interview from all platforms because the latter was deemed to be so inflammatory.
Additionally, J.P. Morgan Chase, GAP, adidas, Balenciaga, and his talent agency Creative Artists Agency have publicly distanced themselves from Kanye West.
Given that Forbes estimates that $1.5 billion of Ye’s net worth comes from the adidas deal alone, the Chicago rapper’s loss of these recent deals cost him his billionaire status. He currently has a $400 million estimated net worth.
