The Adidas team working with Kanye West was given subscriptions to a meditation app and regularly had group-therapy-like sessions to deal with the stress

• Kanye West was reportedly so difficult to deal with that it took a toll on the Adidas team working with him.
• A New York Times investigation found that the team had to have group therapy-like sessions to deal with the stress.

Members of the Adidas team working with Kanye West were given a subscription to a meditation app and regularly had group therapy-like sessions to deal with the stress of working with the rapper, a New York Times investigation found.

The German shoe brand eventually cut ties with Ye in 2022 over the rapper's antisemitic public comments, but the company had, for nearly 10 years prior, already known about Ye's problematic behavior in private, the Times reported.

Ye was so difficult to deal with that members of the Yeezy team had to take turns interacting with him, the Times found. They were also given a subscription to a meditation app and regularly held group therapy-like sessions, the outlet reported.

A special human resources officer was also assigned to the team, according to the outlet.

Ye was known to have explosive outbursts in meetings and with Adidas staff, the Times reported, including drawing a swastika on a shoe mock-up during a meeting in 2013 and once telling a Jewish employee that he should kiss a picture of Hitler every day.

A group of Adidas executives also started a "Yzy Hotline" group chat to strategize how to rein him in, the Times reported. Ye had been increasingly making grandiose demands and mismanaging his finances — issues that were beginning to cause problems not just for the staff tasked with dealing with him, but for the company's bottom line, the Times reported.

Neither Adidas nor representatives for Ye immediately responded to Insider's requests for comment on the Times' investigation.

The revelations show the toll that Adidas' partnership with Ye took on employees.

Working with Ye was seen by retail and sports business experts as an inflection point for Adidas. In 2013, the year that Adidas and Ye unveiled their partnership, the brand's sales in North America were down 1%. Three years later, they were up 18%, largely thanks to working with the rapper.

But whatever the financial results, employees on the Yeezy team had to deal with Ye's comments.

After a May 2018 interview with TMZ where Ye said that slavery in the US "sounds like a choice" by Black people, members of the team talked to Eric Liedtke, an executive member of Adidas' board and global brand manager, about Ye's remarks, according to the Times.

Liedtke reportedly said that Adidas would address race and diversity issues at the company. But Adidas' relationship with Ye remained unchanged, according to the Times.