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Kanye West has had a seriously rough trot of late; in the last month, he’s been hospitalised for a breakdown, citing “exhaustion” and “dehydration”, and now Yeezy has been dealt another shocking blow.
The rapper was forced to cough up almost $345,000 to a cousin who was threatening to leak a sex tape he found on a laptop that used to belong to Kanye back in 2011.
The sex tape was allegedly discovered on the laptop in late 2012 – around the same time Kanye and now-wife Kim Kardashian-West began dating.
According to another one of the 39-year-old’s cousins, Lawrence Franklin, Kanye loaned one cousin the laptop, before this cousin handed it over to another cousin, who consequentially found a sex tape, featuring Yeezy and an unidentified “fair skinned” African-American woman.
Phew!
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Kanye was released from UCLA Medical Center on November 30 after more than a week of treatment following his breakdown.
Despite rumours that their marriage was on the rocks, Kanye and Kim stepped out for a dinner date for the first time since he was hospitalised.
Opening up to the Daily Mail, Franklin says it was this turn of events that caused Kanye to become distrustful of those in his inner-circle.
Not only that, but Franklin alleges that Kanye is still grieving over his mother’s untimely death in 2007 (Donda West died on November 10 after complications arose during a plastic surgery operation).
“The sex tape episode started his decline – he stopped trusting people,” he says.
“This was also around the time when his mother has just died and he takes a lot of responsibility for that.”
WATCH John Legend express his concern for his pal Kanye. Post continues after this video…
And according to Franklin, who is an LA-based entrepreneur and producer, “the family member got this money and started to buy himself a lifestyle he dreamed about” and Kanye wanted only to keep the whole incident “quiet”.
“This did make Kanye upset… It caused a huge rift in our family,” Franklin says.
So much so, that earlier this year, Kanye released a song called “Real Friends” that let us in on his family dramas before we even knew about them!
“I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was f–kin’ bitches on. Paid that n—a 250 thousand just to get it from him. Real friends…Huh?”
Hang in there, Kanye – hang in there!
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