The Kanye West Yeezy season 5 fashion show may be affected by the rapper's psychological issues. (Photo : Getty Images/Drew Angerer)
Kanye West reportedly paid a relative $ 250,000 after the family member threatened to leak his sex tape. The rapper's cousin Lawrence Franklin claims the family member found the footage on a laptop West had given away as a gift.
In an interview with Daily Mail, Franklin revealed that the woman West was having sex with in the video was not his wife Kim Kardashian. Franklin told the U.K. publication, "I was at my aunt's house when the family member who had the laptop called me, a friend of his, and my uncle to the kitchen where he opened the laptop to show a video of Kanye in clear view having sex with a fair-skinned black woman."
West had gifted the laptop to one of his family members but it ended up in the hands of another relative, who found the sex tape on the computer in late 2012, which is the same year West and Kardashian started dating. The relative then threatened to release the videotape and demanded money in exchange for the clip.
The relative and his attorney friend got together and also leaked some information to the public in order to prove the tape's authenticity. The family member received several offers for the sex tape, including one from a porn website, forcing West to pay the relative a quarter of a million dollars out of desperation.
According to Franklin, this incident is what triggered West's decline and he stopped trusting people. He said that the fact that a family member blackmailed him for $250,000 dollars in order to fulfill their own ambitions has made it difficult for the rapper trust anyone within his circle and contributed to his recent breakdown.
In November, West was hospitalized after suffering what the doctors are calling a mental breakdown. The "Famous" hitmaker was handcuffed and checked into a Los Angeles hospital for a psych evaluation after behaving erratically, according to TMZ.
Franklin's story corroborates with a line from his "The Life of Pablo" track "Real Friends." West raps in the song, "I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was fuckin' bitches on/Paid that nigga 250 thousand just to get it from him."
Also, West mentions the incident in his other track, "No More Parties in L.A." In the song, he says, "And as far as real friends, tell all my cousins I love 'em/Even the one that stole the laptop, you dirty m----------."
For additional details on the story, watch the video below:
