Kanye West's New Agent Is His Old Agent — Can He Revive His Touring Career?

Booking agent Cara Lewis is once again representing Kanye West, working to revive his burgeoning touring career that he architected in the 2000s and 2010s before scrupulously destroying it after he was fired in 2016.

Lewis has already had some early success, bringing West and Ty Dolla $ign to Rolling Loud in Los Angeles on March 14 to promote their chart-topping new album. Vultures 1. But in the long run, Lewis faces much more difficult odds to reverse the damage West has done to his career, burning bridges with supporters, settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits with vendors and production companies, and making bigoted and anti-Semitic statements that have they have succeeded. banned by all major talent agencies.

That leaves very little escape for Lewis — “a self-proclaimed Jewish girl from the Bronx,” according to one Profile 2023 in Pollstar — to restart West's career. The saga is the talk of the town in both Los Angeles and New York, with more than six high-profile booking agents saying Advertising sign that Lewis's ability to generate business opportunities for West will be determined by West himself;

“He's still in his bull—, which means he's still in self-destructive mode and can't work,” said a prominent booking agent who spoke on condition of anonymity but said their agency had been approached about representing West and passed. “I'm not taking anything he says at face value. He needs to go away for at least a year and get sober.”

Lewis did not respond to a request for comment.

“There's really no upside for Cara,” says another booking agent, who had also jumped at the chance to represent West. “She will spend most of her time saying no to supporters who have been burned by Kanye in the past. And any concerts he does for him will be nightmares for him to get through.”

West recently posted on social media about his booking challenges. On February 6, he took to Instagram to complain about the lack of interest from major arenas in hosting a listening party for his new album.

“We just sold out the United Center in seven minutes,” he shared in a video. “It's the only arena I've had access to in the past year. And when I call, people say it doesn't exist [availabilities] for me, and you know why that is.'

West made the video shortly after the 02 Arena in London rejected a similar request. He followed that video by asking followers to contact Lewis about booking opportunities, showing a text message Lewis had sent West expressing confidence in his future prospects. The post showing the text message was later deleted by West.

Kanye first began working with Lewis in 2006 when he was at the William Morris Agency, which became William Morris Endeavor (WME) in 2009. In 2012, Lewis left WME to join CAA, bringing along with high profile clients such as Eminem, Ne-Yo, TI and West. Together, West and Lewis developed a touring strategy that generated $160 million in ticket sales, including his Watch the Throne tour with Jay-Z, which generated $75 million in sales and was the highest-grossing tour ever when it ended , according to Billboard Boxscore. .

Had West not stopped touring in 2016, he could have easily brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in concert and festival revenue over the past few years. Even without any regular income from touring for the past seven years, West still ranks as the fifth-highest-grossing hip-hop act in Billboard Boxscore history.

But rather than build on their success, West fired Lewis and CAA and signed with UTA in March 2016. The wrap reported at the time that West left CAA to expand his acting portfolio after the success of his cameo Zoolander 2.

West returned to CAA a year later, but by then Lewis was already gone, working to start her own boutique agency after she and CAA parted ways in November 2016.

While Lewis was building her new business, things really started going downhill for West. In October 2016, moments before taking the stage at the Meadows Music & Arts festival in New York, West learned that his wife, Kim Kardashian, had been robbed at gunpoint in her hotel room in Paris. He ended up canceling the set to fly to France to be with her.

The incident in Paris also led to him canceling two dates on his Saint Pablo tour, eventually returning to the road five days later on October 7 to perform at the United Center. Fans noticed that West seemed withdrawn and erratic on the tour, which finally ended 20 dates early in Sacramento on November 19, 2016, when West performed three songs before going on a tirade about Facebook, Jay-Z, Hillary Clinton and Beyoncé. walking offstage. West was hospitalized two days later after a welfare check conducted by the LAPD.

An investigation by the insurance company Lloyds of London, which West had hired to insure the tour, alleged that he abused alcohol and marijuana on the tour. The two parties eventually settled the dispute, court documents show.

In 2022, West sued Phantom Labs, a company he hired to help produce his free concert with rapper Drake in December 2021. Six months after the concert, Phantom Labs sued West, saying it owed her “7 million dollars from Kanye in outstanding fees for work on various projects over the past year,” including the Free Larry Hoover concert and his 2022 appearance at Coachella, which Kanye canceled days before taking the stage.

“While West's story is known, I wouldn't say the curtain has closed on his career yet,” said a supporter who has followed West's career and did not want to be named for this article. “I'll reserve judgment until his appearance on Rolling Loud. If he puts on a big show and people see it as a success, that will earn him a lot of goodwill and time. Maybe some of [his] former partners can be persuaded to make a deal with him. Or maybe he'll blow them up again. Either way it will be fun to watch and we can all say we were there to see it happen.”