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Kanye West Makes The Cover Of ‘Forbes’ After Going From Massive Debt To Billion-Dollar Sneaker Empire

By Maria Goncalves
Published on: 21:44 PST, Jul 9, 2019

Kanye West is on the cover of Forbes‘ upcoming August issue, where he talks about going from a massive debt situation to becoming one of the richest rappers in the world.

The artist, who was about $53 million in debt just three years ago, managed to turn his life around due to his popular Yeezy sneaker line, which is now a billion-dollar empire. According to the magazine, his Adidas partnership is set to top a whopping $1.5 billion this year, with people from all over the world queuing up to make sure they get their hands on the new Yeezys any time there is a new release.

Kanye, who dubs his iconic shoe line as the “Lamborghini of shoes,” first started his sneaker endeavor with Nike but eventually moved to Adidas in 2013. He reportedly gets 15 percent royalty on wholesale from the sportswear brand, which was dubbed an “unprecedented deal” — for instance, Michael Jordan gets around 5 percent on his wildly popular Air Jordan line that makes about $3 billion annual revenue.

Fans will remember that the father-of-four had somewhat of an online meltdown in 2016 when he went on Twitter to reveal the extent of his debt and to ask Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion in his “ideas.” He received a ton of backlash for it, but that was not enough to make him quit on his creative projects — which was the right move for him, considering he had a pretax income of $150 million just the past year, as per Forbes.

“I’m just blessed through the grace of God to go from tweeting at Mark Zuckerberg (to now). People wondered, ‘Why did you tweet at Mark Zuckerberg?’ And I was like, ‘Hey, I heard he was looking for aliens,”’ Kanye said.

For his cover shoot, the 42-year-old posed in a simple black hoodie and appeared joyful. His wife, Kim Kardashian West, took to social media to share some pictures from the shoot, alongside a proud and supportive message, proving that she has always been by his side even through the toughest times.

“Kanye on @Forbes!!! I love this cover and article. Kanye has worked so hard to build Yeezy and always stays true to his vision. He is my inspiration,” she wrote on Twitter.

“I watch how hard he works as he puts his soul into every idea & product that he creates. It’s of no surprise to anyone who works w Kanye that he has been able to turn millions of $ in debt into a billion dollar empire in only 4 years – 100% on his own terms while owning it 100%,” the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star added.

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