*Kanye West’s cousin wants you to believe that the rap star’s mental breakdown was triggered by the theft of his laptop by a family member, who then turned around and blackmailed the artist for its return. The hot item featured a sex tape of Ye and an unidentified woman, which West did not want exposed to the public.
AllHipHop.com notes that West touched on the personal betrayal in the lyrics to his song “Real Friends,” which featured on his “The Life of Pablo” album. On the track, he revealed he had to pay the relative $250,000 to keep the X-rated footage of himself under wraps.
He rapped, “I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was fkin’ bches on/Paid that n**ga 250 thousand just to get it from him/Real friends… Huh?”
Kanye’s cousin Lawrence Franklin says the incident sparked a family rift in 2012, and led West to develop trust issues with those he was closest to.
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Lawrence believes the stress of that situation worsened over the years and contributed to his breakdown last month, which landed Kanye in the hospital for a mental health evaluation.
“The sex tape episode started his decline – he stopped trusting people,” he told DailyMail.com. “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…?”
Lawrence added: “When you go from being a regular person to being a huge star – and having all of these mounting issues and being completely void of the normalcy that you once had – it’s tough. Where do you go? Who do you trust at the end of the day?”
Kanye had to hire a team of attorneys to ensure the explicit footage would never surface in public.
“Kanye was adamant that the tape would never get released…,” Lawrence said. “This did make Kanye upset, but it was all kept quiet. It caused a huge rift in our family.”
Kanye spent nine days at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center last month, and has since returned to the spotlight — making headlines last week by meeting with president-elect Donald Trump.
There are rumors circulating that the real reason why West met with Trump is because “he didn’t want a lot of potential secrets about himself being exposed so offered up some information in a separate matter to keep the big secrets, secret.”
