Kanye's cousin Lawrence Franklin reveals how the past incident, which he rapped about on the song 'Real Friends', is connected to the rapper's recent hospitalization.
- Dec 20, 2016
AceShowbiz - We all know that Kanye West rapped about paying a relative $250,000 to prevent his sex tape from leaking on his song "Real Friends". But do you know that the lines "I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was f**kin' b***hes on/ Paid that n***a 250 thousand just to get it from him/ Real friends, huh?" were inspired by a true story?
Following 'Ye's meltdown and hospitalization, his cousin Lawrence Franklin has come forward to reveal that the rapper once made a sex tape with an unidentified woman and he had to shell out $250,000 to another cousin who planned to profit from the explicit footage.
Speaking to Daily Mail, Lawrence said that the whole thing happened in 2012, the same year Kanye started dating Kim Kardashian. At the time, the sex tape was found in a laptop Kanye had given to a family member as a gift. The other cousin was borrowing the laptop when he discovered the video of the "Gold Digger" hitmaker having sex with a "fair skinned black woman."
"The family member knew what he had was gold, and later called an old friend of his that was an attorney. He put together a small team him and his attorney went after Kanye, and to show that they meant business they leaked a little information publicly to let it be know they indeed had the footage," Lawrence shared. "The family member tried to keep a low profile but it was not long before Kanye's team learned who it was that had the sex tape."
Kanye tried hard to stop the video from leaking. He also enlisted a team of friends and attorneys who worked to get the laptop back. In the end, he quietly settled the problem by paying his cousin a lot of money.
The sex tape never saw the light of day, but the incident caused a huge rift between Kanye and his family. He started to distance himself from the family and Lawrence believed that the extortion was what led to the superstar's recent breakdown.
"The sex tape episode started his decline - he stopped trusting people," he explained. "At the end of the day if a member of your family had taken you for a quarter of a million dollars - so they can complete their own ambitions - who can you trust within your circle?"
