Kanye West can’t be tamed.
Sure, the self-proclaimed billionaire blew up the Internet Sunday night when he appeared to order his wife, Bianca Censori, to strip down to a completely see-through mini dress on the Grammys red carpet.
But for those in West’s tight-knit circle, his bizarre — and sometimes alarming — antics come as no surprise, and neither does his continuing popularity.
“The guy is completely unhinged,” said a close friend of the couple — meaning it as a compliment. “He’s the child in the classroom who won’t be tamed; the other children are following what the teacher says, but this child won’t and he’s the most popular child in the class.”
Despite being dropped from deals with Balenciaga, Gap and Adidas, as well as talent agency CAA over disgraceful anti-semitic remarks in 2022, West has definitively not been canceled by fans.
You still see his Yeezy slides and sneakers on people everywhere, despite not being sold in stores in three years. While you can most find them on the secondhand market for under $200, a sales associate at Yankeekicks in Soho told Page Six a pair of highly collectible Yeezy Boost 350 V2s commands $574 — and it’s mostly teenagers buying them.
“People are consuming his products more and more,” said the friend.
West’s 2024 albums, “Vultures 1” and “Vultures 2,” featured huge collaborators like Travis Scott, Ty Dolla Sign, Quavo, Timbaland and Swizz Beatz and hit, respectively, No. 1 and 2 on the Billboard 200.
It’s no wonder he still commands respect in the hip-hop world.
According to music industry analyst Clayton Durant, in the past year West’s monthly Spotify listeners have grown by 1.3 million — to nearly 66 million, putting him just outside the site’s top-20 most popular artists. His Instagram following exploded by 10%, reaching 20.8 million. His YouTube channel amassed 1.2 billion views.
“His fan base is so faithful and so strong. They’re committed to him,” fashion designer Hoza Rodriguez, who has worked with West’s music team, told The Post.
Still, the 47-year-old has had to create his own distribution pipeline, with his team using independent software to deliver his music to streaming platforms (the contract with his old record label, Def Jam, ended in 2021) and selling YZY clothing — as the brand has been renamed post-Adidas — through his own website.
“No corporations leveraging my platform,” West posted on Instagram last month.
“He basically doesn’t sleep. He never relaxes. He’s always there to try to make art not for himself, but for all of us,” said a West insider. “That’s what he thinks, you know. It’s a duty.”
The insider said West remains “very upset” over losing his lucrative deal with Adidas, which is still selling off remaining Yeezy merch.
“He has PTSD over Adidas,” said the insider.
West has said his wealth crashed by $2 billion in a single day after being dropped by his partners. According to Fast Company, Yeezy drove as much as $1.7 billion in revenue annually to Adidas, with 15% going directly to West.
He claims he’s worth $2.7 billion today, although Forbes values his fortune at $400 million.
According to data from Chartmetric and Beats + Bytes, West has amassed 2,095,839,288 streams on Spotify for his last two albums — equates to approximately $6,287,517.86 in earnings.
He could likely get $300 million for his music catalog, Durant said, even though he doesn’t control the full publishing rights for past albums.
West also owns 5% of ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s billion-dollar SKIMS brand, while we’re told that she owns a “double digit” chunk of Yeezy.
“He’s able to make money by being who he is,” said the West pal. “For him, it’s more important to be an artist, but he needs money to be an artist.”
Following West’s surprise marriage to Censori in December 2022, nine months after his split from Kardashian, the mother of his four children, he seems to have a partner in both chaos and YZY.
The couple have become known for their sartorial stunts, including her walking the streets of Florence, Italy, covering her bare chest with a throw pillow.
Sunday’s Grammys spectacle came as West was nominated for Best Rap Song for “Carnival,” his ¥$ supergroup single with Ty Dolla Sign.
As they stopped to pose for photos on the red carpet, West told Censori, according to a lip reader, “Make a scene” — leading to her dropping her fur coat to reveal that maximum-exposure dress.
The insider told Page Six it was a “premeditated” moment meant “for fun.”
“They were just making jokes all the time,” said the insider of the planning process in Tokyo, adding the look was about stripping Censori bare of artifice: “Just brush her hair and wash her face … like how she came out of her mother’s womb.”
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. was forced to deny reports the couple was escorted out by cops and clarified West had been invited to the ceremony.
But the images reignited speculation that Censori has been brainwashed by her husband.
“Now they’re accusing him of torturing his wife. It’s not true,” said the West insider. “I’m there. They’re having a lot of fun together. He’s not the gangster that he pretends to be … He just likes to desecrate the system.”
The friend insisted Censori, an Australian architect and designer, “has agency over her life”.
“Anything else is hogwash,” claimed the friend. “She’s well educated. She’s with Ye because she wants to be. She’s intoxicated by the adventure … to say she’s entrapped is ridiculous. She’s a character in this international spectacle.”
Malik Yusef, a musical partner of West, was at the Grammys as a nominee for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album, and said West had warned him something was afoot.
“He told me he was going to do something crazy like that, So I was expecting it,” he told Page Six of Censori’s red-carpet display — adding that he was grateful to West for the heads-up, because he was there with his nine-year-old. “I knew it was going to be a little bit too rough for my daughter.”
As for Censori, who holds a senior design role in West’s company, Yusef said, “She’s a smart woman. And she does what she wants to do… I think she likes being the center of attention.”
Outside of Censori, the insider said West “has no personal life.” Everything between the two of them revolves around the work, which is now based in Tokyo. (American Apparel founder Dov Charney, now the CEO of Yeezy, holds down the fort in LA where there is a factory.)
“He creates loads of work. So much energy and resources are expended,” the insider said, adding that ideas are often discarded before completion. “Sometimes you get overpaid, sometimes you don’t get paid. It’s a bit chaotic. It’s an artistic process more than a business. There is a lot of turmoil.”
“If he has a vision that is impossible he’ll still want to explore that anyway…of course he makes mistakes and he offends people or instigates things he shouldn’t, but we’re all kings and queens and he’s the jester,” said the friend.
Among his offenses are the antisemitic comments that got him blackballed from so many brands in 2022.
The star wrote on X that he was “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE … You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”
He then told disgraced pundit Alex Jones, “I see good things about Hitler.”
West apologized in a rambling 2023 statement in Hebrew, saying on social media, “It was not my intention to hurt or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused.”
But he also told influencer Justin LaBoy in a video obtained by TMZ Monday: “I was gonna go to [Donald Trump’s] inauguration but they told me I had to write another apology and say again that I wasn’t an antisemitic.”
“He felt bad about the comments, sure, but it’s an art project and he’s playing the villain,” said the friend. “He doesn’t want to apologize for being a free-thinking person. He’s sorry he hurt the feelings of people he’s apologized to, but he doesn’t have shame. His whole life is about being different.”
The West insider recalled asking him, “‘Why did you say the things about Jewish people? Why did you say these terrible profanities? ‘He would not reveal why.”
Although West’s social media accounts were temporarily suspended, he’s back on X and, occasionally, Instagram — though he’s mostly quiet and often posts, then quickly deletes.
Instead, Rodriguez said, he’s letting Censori “push the limit to get the attention [and] using her as the voice without words.
“He’s a creative genius,” the friend insisted, adding, “His childlike behavior is not poisoned by what other adults are taught to do,”
West has previously been open about his bipolar disorder. The friend admitted of the entrepreneur’s mental health: “He makes mistakes that a person with a more orderly life may not have said or communicated, but what is normal anyway?”
Added the insider: “He doesn’t want to be tamed. He wants to stay wild.”
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