Kanye West Faces Costly Fallout from Kim Kardashian Romance
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Kanye West Courtesy of Kanye West
This story contains spoilers about the ongoing drama between rapper Kanye West and reality television star Kim Kardashian.
Earlier this month, things between West and Kardashian had gotten so heated that news outlets were calling for a police escort for the rapper after he pulled into a KKW Beauty makeup artist’s driveway late one afternoon with an SUV crammed with his prized luggage. After a furious exchange of words, West apparently left and drove off.
While Kardashian continued with her schedule, West’s publicist, Mark Z. Barabak, was frantically trying to track him down. “We were like, Whoa! What’s going on? What’s up? This Kanye is crazy,” recalls Barabak, who is also a makeup artist from New York. “We didn’t see any red flags of anything.”
That’s because he was not on the radar of the gossip blogs, the tabloids or any other media outlet. In fact, all West told them was that Kardashian was out of the house and that he was taking a personal day.
“It just happened to fall on a moment where we’re doing press at a couple of places,” says Barabak, adding that he has made a handful of updates on West’s whereabouts on Twitter and Facebook over the subsequent days. “I just made all of it public information, which is a great way of keeping things quiet if there’s no real story.”
By late this week, Barabak had reached out to Kanye and Kim to offer an amends for the verbal altercation — but there’s still no sign of progress, and Kardashian is apparently still furious with West for an alleged affair.
So that’s what makes the situation so precarious.
According to Barabak, who was there on the ground when West drove off earlier this month, the rapper is now planning to return to New York City to take some time away from the drama. “I got his number; he was very open-minded about coming back,” Barabak says.
