Kanye West Accused of Stealing Logo Design from Up-and-Coming Black-Owned Brand

Kanye West is once again caught up in another controversy, this time he’s accused of ripping off the logo for his “DONDA’ album merch.

Yeezy allegedly stole the logo design from a Black-owned business, Infinity G8ds. Randy Crawford the brand’s creative director made the claims to the Daily Beast. He states that Kanye’s merch features a direct copy of the logo used on some of Infinity G8ds’s clothing.

“It’s disappointing,” Dawkins said. “We don’t have any bad vibes or bad feelings toward him, we actually like the dude. But how he handled business? Well, that’s another story.”

According to Dawkins, Kanye’s personal chef initially contacted the brand in late July. He claimed the two men were friends and met through another one of Yeezy’s chefs, Travis Reece.

Dawkins claims to have been personally involved. “I was on the phone directly talking to Kanye,” Dawkins disclosed. “He was like, ‘Bro, I really love your design. It’s really dope. When can I meet you to talk about your process?’”

On July 26, Dawkins said he and his team drove from Miami to Atlanta to meet with Kanye for him to understand their design process. Dawkins claims that once they broke it down to him, he loved their ideas and their design.

He says they had dinner together and Ye sold them dreams of doing business with them and keeping in contact. This never materialized.

Dawkins said that although there has been some communication between the two camps, they have been unable to reach a resolution. Travis Reece also lost his job as Kanye’s chef.

Dawkins sees this as, “a misjudgment of his character for me,” adding “From one Black artist to another Black artist, he could have said, ‘I see what you got going on, let’s help you gain some exposure, some visibility.’ That’s all we ask.”

The allegations first came to light when a designer affiliated with the brand shared some videos on her personal Instagram page, accusing the Chicago rapper of stealing Infinity G8ds’s logo design. The video is captioned:

“To see all the thought, hard work, and dedication put into @infinityg*ds and then to see someone disrespectfully copy with no credit given is sickening and then not just anybody but @kanyewest .. someone with so much money and so much power .. yet this proves that he is indeed beneath us!! I’m sure these types of situations happen often but it definitely hit home this time..”