In the days after Wireless Festival announced West as its headliner March 30, Pepsi and Diageo—a British alcoholic beverage company—withdrew their sponsorship, with Diageo telling CNN it had “informed the organisers of our concerns.”
Back in January, West—dad to North West, 12, Saint West, 10, Chicago West, 8, and Psalm West, 6, with ex-wife Kim Kardashian—spoke out about his antisemitic remarks, saying he was “deeply mortified” in an essay published as an ad in the Wall Street Journal. He attributed his actions to a previously undiagnosed brain injury.Â
“In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold T-shirts bearing it,” West, who was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016, said. “One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type-1 are the disconnected moments – many of which I still cannot recall – that led to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body-experience.”
