Kanye West Reportedly Shelled Out $250K to Avoid a Sex Tape Leak
If you thought G.O.O.D. Music head honcho and creative whiz Kanye West drove a hard bargain, you definitely haven’t met his cousin, whom he allegedly paid $250,000 to conceal a sex tape, Daily Mail reports.
Kanye West’s cousin, Lawrence Franklin, revealed to Daily Mail that it all started when Kanye West gifted the family member with an old laptop of his back in 2012. On the laptop, there was reportedly a video of some X-rated content with Yeezy and a Black woman described as “fair-skinned.” Franklin said that he and two others witnessed the video before the unidentified family member threatened West of its public release.
“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.”
Upon discovering the video, the family member contacted an attorney and began building an entire legal team to blackmail Yeezy with the tape, Franklin claims. He added that, in order “to show that they meant business,” the family member even released bits of the tape to prove that they weren’t bluffing. Obviously, Yeezy’s hefty cash offer was enough for the family member, as Franklin said that the individual, whose cover was blown later on, had received offers from numerous vendors —including a porn site.
While accruing his own legal team and set of friends to help quell the situation before the public’s grabby hands became involved, Yeezy was “adamant” about the tape not being released, Franklin said. He went on to explain that Yeezy required a lie detector test from the family member upon handing over the cash for the laptop to be returned. Sadly enough, the scandal caused a rift in the family and Ye distanced himself, Franklin said, and it was then that his mental backslide rapidly began.
"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?"
Yeezy touches on the incident in his song "Real Friends" and on The Life of Pablo track "No More Parties in LA."
Franklin also mentioned the widely assumed cause of Ye’s breakdown: the death of his mother Donda West. He said that his life would have panned out very differently had she still been alive — including his marriage to Kim Kardashian. As he asserts that Yeezy and his family are extremely family-oriented and rich in African-American roots, he added that the Kardashians “do not represent [their] family values.”
“Kim Kardashian made her way to fame through another sex tape and by showing her body — that's who she is,” Franklin said. “When it comes down to substance, from the outside looking in — it doesn't reflect what's reality to us."
He even said that Kanye’s mother would have seen Kim as nothing other than “a good business move.”
“If there was no fame, no fortune and no celebrity status and there was a woman who represented the things that Kim represents, knowing what Aunt Donda represented, she would not have approved,” he assured. “She represented class, dignity and respect, woman power and Black power, and she loved God.”
Welp. We know who won't be getting any electronic gifts from Yeezy at Christmas this year.