Kanye west hit with damning new lawsuit
Another former employee is suing the rapper.
Words by Nikki Peach
It’s not a great time to be Kanye West. Last month, he faced a comprehensive lawsuit from his former personal assistant, Lauren Pisciotta, who accused him of sexual assault among various other serious allegations.
Now, West faces a new lawsuit from his former Yeezy project manager, Murphy Aficionado, with 12 causes of action and a demand for a jury trial. Aficionado claims to have been unlawfully terminated, alleging that he was not compensated for his work, and makes several damning claims about West’s behaviour. West is yet to respond to the lawsuit.
The former employee alleges that the rapper made discriminatory comments about the Jewish and Filipino communities during his nine months at the company. According to the lawsuit, West allegedly made antisemitic remarks on a regular basis and once said, ‘The Jews are out to get me. They froze my bank account. The Jews got Kim [Kardashian] and my kids.’ He allegedly went on to say his ex-wife Kardashian has ‘Jewish masters’.
This is not the first time West has been accused of antisemitism. In October 2022, after being locked out of Instagram, West posted a series of vitriolic tweets on X and wrote that he would be going ‘death con 3 on Jewish people’. The post was immediately removed from the platform and West’s account was locked for violating the rules regarding hateful conduct.
LAWSUIT CLAIMS WEST MADE HIS ANTISEMITISM WELL-KNOWN TO STAFF
According to Aficionado’s lawsuit, the rapper made further racially charged comments about his Filipino ancestry and allegedly told him to remove his ‘ugly’ traditional tattoos called ‘Batok’. The former employee said that ‘almost immediately’ after he started working for him, West ‘began to make his proud bigotry and antisemitism well-known’ and ‘preached this dogma almost daily’.
The claims do not end there. Aficionado also alleges that West once requested that he come to his hotel room while he engaged in sexual activity with his wife, Bianca Censori. The complaint alleges that in the middle of their conversation, West ‘abruptly and without warning’ told him not to move and went into the adjoining room and started having sex with his wife.
Ten minutes later, the lawsuit claims, West returned to join Aficionado wearing a t-shirt featuring a swastika. He allegedly asked, ‘Don’t you like my shirt?’ and then showed his employee ‘nude photos of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian on his phone’ without solicitation.
Pisciotta, for her part, accused West of similar ‘twisted sexual fantasies’ in her recent lawsuit and claims she was often deployed as his ‘sex party coordinator’. She claims the rapper would transform his office into a ‘sexual playground’ and would host sex parties at luxury hotels, which Pisciotta alleges that she was repeatedly exposed to.
In one claim, the former assistant alleges that West spoke of his plans to sleep with his wife’s mother in front of her. The rapper denies all allegations made by Pisciotta.
As well as the disturbing allegations about his sexual conduct and racist, derogatory language, Aficionado made further damning claims about West as an employer. He claims to have regularly worked 50–70-hour weeks and ‘on several occasions even slept at the office’.
Then, four months after starting at Yeezy, Aficionado was supposedly moved to West’s other business venture, Donda Academy. In July 2023, a Donda Academy representative claimed the school ‘would no longer be in operation’ and all of Aficionado’s Yeezy assignments were allegedly ‘revoked’ and he was ‘no longer welcome’ in the offices.
As such, the former employee claims to have suffered economic damages, non-economic damages, punitive damages, malice, oppression, fraud, attorney’s fees, and exhaustion of administrative remedies.
The lawsuit goes on to explain that ‘defendants violated these laws by failing to provide plaintiff’s last pay check promptly and failing to pay penalties, including additional wages, interest and fees’.
West faces three additional lawsuits from his former employees. In October, the rapper’s former ‘director of intelligence’ sued him and alleged that he was tasked with investigating the Kardashian family and asked to tail Censori while she was visiting family in Australia.
In April, another former employee, Benjamin Deshon Provo, sued West alleging that he was fired when he refused to shave his dreadlocks tied to his Muslim faith.
Both Provo and Aficionado are represented by the same attorney, Carney Shegerian, who also sued West on behalf of Trevor Phillips – another former employee who claims he was fired due to racism. In his case, West’s lawyer Brian Brumfield filed a request to withdraw in September saying that West had fired him in June.
He told the court, ‘Defendant will also not speak with counsel and Defendant refuses to pay counsel as well.’ A hearing for the case is scheduled for next week.
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