A lawsuit filed against Kanye West, the rapper who legally changed his name to Ye, alleges that he fired a caretaker for refusing to remove all windows and electricity from his Malibu home, in order to create a “bomb shelter”.
According to the suit filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles county superior court and reviewed by NBC News, Tony Saxon, a former project manager and property caretaker, alleges labor code violations including hazardous working conditions, unpaid wages and wrongful retaliatory termination.
Saxon told NBC Ye wanted to transform his Tadao Ando-designed beach house, which he bought in 2021 for $57m, into a “bomb shelter from the 1910s”. In addition to demolishing marble bathrooms, the rapper wanted to strip out windows, plumbing and electricity and replace stairs with slides, Saxon said.
“We were going to be gutting all of that out and sort of building him a Bat Cave” to “hide from the Clintons in and the Kardashians in”, Saxon told NBC.
Ye was previously married to the reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
Saxon also said that although he initially thought Ye wanted to create an “art project”, it became “clear that, no, he wants to live in here”.
The star “wanted no electricity”, Saxon said. “He only wanted plants. He only wanted candles. He only wanted battery lights. And he just wanted to have everything open and dark … You can’t keep food in that house, because you had no refrigerator left … You had no windows. I had seagulls flying in.”
Saxon also said Ye did not want to be a “slave” to modern conveniences and wanted to avoid being “accessible” to the US government.
“He wants to be on a privatized wifi network,” Saxon told NBC. “He wants to have an alternate source of energy. He wants to have no doors, no windows, no fixtures, just concrete.”
Ye did not immediately comment.
Saxon, said he lived in the home while working in “miserable” conditions. On Instagram, he posted photos of a mattress on a floor with plastic bottles of water. He wrote: “I was a PRISONER of the house. I couldn’t leave it alone as I was the only one with a key authorized or trusted to live there. I was trapped I slept on a floor.”
According to the lawsuit, Ye fired Saxon three days after he complained about a back injury. The suit also accuses Ye of insisting Saxon transport large generators and, when he refused, ordering him to “get the hell out”, saying he would be “considered an enemy if he did not comply”.
The lawsuit says Ye only made two payments despite promising $20,000 a week. Saxon worked for approximately two months, the suit says.
Saxon’s lawyer, Ron Zambrano, told NBC the rapper showed “a reckless disregard toward his employees … not paying his bills while treating workers terribly.
“No employee should have to suffer through the sort of working conditions Mr Saxon was forced to endure, yet Ye showed no concern and merely wanted the work done, despite the hazardous and unsafe, not to mention illegal, actions he was trying to force the plaintiff to undertake.”
Other suits have been filed against Ye, including one in July by a teacher fired from his California private school, Yeezy Christian Academy, allegedly for reporting unsafe conditions, and another last year over an alleged $7.1m in unpaid production company fees.
The rapper, who mounted a failed campaign for president in 2020, has also generated extensive political controversy over antisemitic comments and close relations with Donald Trump and far-right extremists.