In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail, Kanye West’s cousin Lawrence Franklin says the rapper cut himself off from the family after he paid $250,000 to a family member who threatened to release a sex tape. The intimate encounter of the rapper with a “fair-skinned Black woman” was discovered on his laptop. West reportedly became distrustful of people in his inner circle after the blackmail.
In this case, the saying “no good deed goes unpunished is true.” The rapper reportedly gifted a relative the laptop that contained the video of West smashing the unidentified woman.
West’s single “Real Friends,” released earlier this year, hints at the incident that Franklin, 31, references.
The lyrics are “I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was f*ckin’ bitches on. Paid that n***a 250 thousand just to get it from him. Real friends…Huh?”
Franklin also drops a bomb that West’s mother, Donda West, who passed away following elected plastic surgery in 2007, wouldn’t approve of Kim Kardashian whom he married on May 24, 2014 and has two children, North and Saint.
He tells Daily Mail in part:
“For the most part I don’t look at the Kardashians as real people.
“Kanye comes from a very family-orientated environment with roots and African American family lifestyle – you know family reunions with food and things like that.
“The Kardashians are the complete opposite of what’s familiar in our community.
“So it’s kind of weird for him and I can understand there’s no way for him to release that.
“The Kardashians do not represent our family values,’ Franklin said. ‘Kim Kardashian made her way to fame through another sex tape and by showing her body – that’s who she is.
“When it comes down to substance, from the outside looking in – it doesn’t reflect what’s reality to us.
“Everything they do is for the camera. They are always showing their bodies to get attention from the camera and at the end of the day that isn’t real.
“I’m not personally sure how Aunt Donda would have received the Kardashians other than a good business move.”
