Kanye West invested a significant sum in a Super Bowl advertisement, and shortly after it aired, Yeezy began selling clothing with pro-Nazi imagery.
If you tuned into the year’s most watched sports event, you might remember the rapper and fashion designer appearing during the commercial breaks.
In the ad, West is seen sitting in what looks like a dentist’s chair, stating: “So what’s up, guys, I spent, like all the money for the commercial on these new teeth. So once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone. Erm… erm… go to yeezy.com.”
The commercial initially received positive feedback online. However, the mood quickly shifted when, about an hour after it aired, t-shirts bearing swastikas appeared for sale, which were not present on the Yeezy site during the broadcast.
Questions arose about how Kanye West and Yeezy managed to sell t-shirts with swastikas. The pro-Nazi t-shirts were not listed on the website during the commercial’s broadcast.
Approximately an hour after the Super Bowl ad, yeezy.com was offering a single t-shirt featuring a swastika for sale.
Fox-owned stations like KTTV Los Angeles aired his commercial, and there may have been additional outlets that did the same.
The ad slots Kanye reserved are typically occupied by local businesses from the network it was shown on. Since the 30-second commercial itself did not raise any immediate concerns, it made it to air.
However, after entering the local ad rotation, Kanye took advantage of the exposure to make his controversial move.
A source told Variety: “It was such a small ad, I don’t think anyone put two and two together. The copy was clean, the website was clean, and so they did their due diligence with that little part of it.”
In response to the controversial t-shirt featuring a symbol associated with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, the Yeezy website has been shut down and is currently inaccessible.
Visitors to the site will encounter an error message that reads: “This store is unavailable.”
Shopify, the e-commerce platform hosting many online businesses including Yeezy, issued a statement to NBC News explaining the website’s removal: “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.”