In a post shared on Instagram, creative consultant and fashion designer Ibn Jasper revealed that he was recruited by the artist formerly known as Kanye West to work on a potential brand named after his 2013 album, Yeezus.
“[Ye] assigned me, Heron [Preston] and [Virgil Abloh] to run the brand,” Jasper wrote alongside pictures showing skateboard decks and equipment, bags, gloves, and hats featuring Yeezus branding. “I was also working with [Nicky Diamonds] at the time and [Kelly Mustapha] was the product manager. She left Diamond and got hired at the company that makes all the music industry merchandise. She called me and said the company gave her this project as her [first] assignment.”
Jasper noted that the project was “perfect” because everyone involved already had a strong working relationship, and there were a lot of shared connections to skate equipment manufacturers. “Nick also agreed to produce all the bolts and bearings so people could get a full Yeezus complete skateboard that you could actually skate for real,” he added. “[Jerry Lorenzo] was a major part of coming up with the visual identity and rock vibe for the album merchandise.”
In a comment on Complex Style’s Instagram post about the proposed Yeezus brand, Jasper added, “The Yeezus merch is what actually made every artist start making merch a part of their business again.”
While Ye did go on to release a wide variety of Yeezus merch in support of the album and its subsequent tour, which went down between October 2013 and September 2014, the brand never came to fruition. The same year that he launched the Yeezus album, however, he launched his Yeezy fashion brand, which went on to have collaborations with the likes of Adidas and Gap. Both of those partnerships, though, fell apart after contract disputes and Adidas seeking to distance itself from Ye after his embrace of antisemitism.