Kanye “Ye” West is facing another lawsuit from former employees. The 47-year-old rapper was accused of perpetuating a racist and hostile work environment, and his wife, Bianca Censori, was also named in the lawsuit.
According to TMZ, West is being accused of “forced labor and cruel inhuman, or degrading treatment,” and Censori, 29, allegedly sent “one worker a file-sharing link containing hardcore sexual activity.” Additionally, West’s former chief of staff, Milo Yiannopoulos, was named in the lawsuit. He and West were accused of forcing employees to work “insanely long hours” and subjecting them to racism in the workplace.
The filing was submitted by developers that were working on West’s streaming app, YZYVSN.
According to the lawsuit, the unidentified individuals were allegedly promised to be paid $120,000 for their work as long as they “completed the app.” The former workers further alleged that some of them were called “slaves” and “new slaves” and were ordered to sign non-disclosure agreements while working for West and Yiannopoulos. The team worked remotely and communicated via the communication systems Slack, Discord and Zoom, per the lawsuit.
Additionally, some of those working on West’s app were minors as young as 14 years old, the lawsuit claims, and were also forced to sign “volunteer” agreements.
In response to the lawsuit, Yiannopoulos released a statement on behalf of Censori.
“I’ve been authorized by Bianca to stress that any allegation that she showed or caused to be shown any pornographic material to minors is offensive, disgusting, abhorrent and categorically and wholly false,” his statement read, per Deadline. “The tragic, desperate, attention-seeking wannabe Yeezy staffer behind this egregious and repulsive pack of lies, Shemar DaCosta, has never had any kind of access to Ye, his family, or Yeezy, or any information pertinent to the company, and he never will.”
Yiannopoulos also denied the claims made against him, adding in his statement that he has tried “to get these app developers paid, as voluminous correspondence demonstrates.” He added that anyone “asserting otherwise, including many in the press, are lazy or simply dishonest buffoons uncritically repeating mendacious lies from a lawsuit that takes more imaginative leaps than The Lord of the Rings.”
This isn’t the first time that West has faced legal trouble. Last month, he was sued by his former assistant Lauren Pisciotta for sexual harassment, wrongful termination and several other claims. In April, former Yeezy employee Trevor Phillips accused the rapper of subjecting him to a discriminatory and hostile workplace.
