Kanye West and wife Bianca Censori split: reports

Kanye West and his wife Bianca Censori have split, reports said Thursday, capping two weeks of controversy for the rapper whose once-stellar career has descended into chaos.

The pair have separately sought legal advice over a divorce, entertainment website TMZ said, while the Daily Mail reported the 30-year-old architect has agreed to a $5 million payout.

The reports come just days after the couple caused a stir with a jaw-dropping red carpet appearance in which Censori paraded naked on the arm of her entrepreneur husband.

The viral stunt at the Grammy Awards sparked concerns that the 47-year-old rapper and music producer was coercing his wife, who has frequently been seen semi-nude during their two years of marriage.

Days later, West -- who now calls himself Ye -- went on a days-long rant on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

He called himself a "Nazi" and said he had "dominion over" his wife.

"I don't make her do nothing she doesn't want to but she definitely wouldn't have been able to do it without my approval," he wrote in one unpunctuated all-caps post.

The account went dark at the end of last week, though it was not clear if it had been pulled by X or voluntarily shut down.

West's Yeezy.com website was yanked this week after it began selling nothing but T-shirts with a swastika on the front.

E-commerce provider Shopify said it had removed the site because the retailer had "violated our terms."

On Thursday the URL showed only the apparently handwritten message "Yeezy stores coming soon."

The New York Post said West's Nazi T-shirt stunt had tipped Censori over the edge.

"She's had enough," the outlet quoted a source as saying.

"The swastika shirt was the last straw. She told him that's not who she is, and that she can't be associated with that.

"She doesn't want any part of that circus. He believes that she'll come back to him, he's saying that she's just mad at him, but right now she's told him that she's completely done."

The Hollywood Reporter, however, quoted right-wing agitator Milo Yiannopolous, who it said was a rep for the couple, denying the split.

"Ye and Bianca are in Los Angeles, about to enjoy Valentine's Day together. Announcements about their private life will come from them directly, not unsourced rumor in the tabloid press," he told the outlet.

West -- who has previously spoken of living with bipolar disorder, but now says he is autistic -- was formerly married to reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

The couple, who divorced in 2022, have four children.

© Agence France-Presse