While appearing on the Thursday (July 17) episode of Danielle Robay’s Question Everything podcast, the SB Projects founder opened up about where he stands with the rapper after previously representing him for about three years. Braun has since retired from music management, while Ye has embroiled himself in controversy for repeatedly making antisemitic comments, praising Hitler and calling himself a Nazi.
When asked how he feels about his former client’s actions, Braun — who is Jewish and has grandparents who survived the Holocaust — was candid. “I don’t know him anymore,” the mogul said frankly.
“The person that I knew wasn’t someone who says those things,” he continued of Ye. “Sometimes the hardest thing to do with someone you care about is mourn them while they’re still here. The person that I knew is not the person that I’m seeing, so I don’t have a relationship anymore.”
When asked whether he thinks Ye can be steered back in the right direction, Braun said he wasn’t sure. “I don’t know him, and I think right now, I have three beautiful kids that need a dad to focus on them and make sure they’re prepared and strong in this world,” he added. “That’s going to be my focus.”
Braun has officially been out of the music management game since June 2024, when he announced that he’d be pivoting away to focus on his role as CEO of HYBE America. Earlier this month, however, he transitioned out of that position as well, with the company announcing July 1 that he’d be focusing on other ventures while still serving as a director of the board and senior advisor to chairman Bang Si-Hyuk.
When he was still managing artists, Braun also worked with Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Tori Kelly and, perhaps most notably, Justin Bieber. In another recent podcast appearance, Braun shared details about his current relationship with the Canadian pop star, saying on The Diary of a CEO, “We worked together for so long and we had such extreme success, and I think you get to a point as a man where you want to show the world you can do it on your own … I think at this point, that’s what he’s doing.”
As for Ye, the hip-hop titan has doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on his antisemitic viewpoints since 2022. In May, however, he claimed that he was “done with antisemitism,” writing on X, “God forgive me for the pain I’ve caused.”
Watch Braun’s full interview on Question Everything below.
