Kanye West has a troubled history with laptops. This could be why he is so obsessed with being the next Steve Jobs — because he needs an Apple Genius Bar near him at all times.
He raps about drama surrounding laptops in two songs on The Life of Pablo: "Real Friends," (I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was fuckin' bitches on/ Paid that n---- 250 thousand just to get it from him/ Real friends/ Huh?) and "No More Parties in L.A." (And as far as real friends, tell all my cousins I love 'em/ Even the one that stole the laptop, you dirty motherfucker).
At the time, the diss to his cousin were pale in comparison to the controversial "Famous" lyrics. So what? His family member stole a laptop back in the day — no biggie.
But now, Lawrence Franklin, a cousin of West, says that a family member did indeed have drama with the rapper over contents on a laptop. And a lot of it.
Franklin told The Daily Mail that in 2012, West gave a family member a laptop as a gift without realizing there was still a personal video on it. In the rumored video, West is having sex with an unidentified woman who is not Amber Rose or Kim Kardashian (the only two women West had been linked to at the time).
"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," he told the site. After seeing the incriminating video, Franklin said the cousin "knew he had gold" and wanted to basically blackmail West over it.
In the end, West reportedly paid more than $250,000, but not without also requiring the cousin to take a lie detector test to prove that nothing was leaked to the public. The incident apparently caused a huge rift in the family, and things were never the same. Both West and the cousin kept quiet about the incident (except for those explicit TLOP lyrics). Franklin goes on to talk candidly about West's personal life, saying that "Aunt Donda [Kanye's mother] would not have approved of Kim Kardashian —that's the truth."
The Daily Mail writes that they made "multiple attempts" to confirm the story with West's people, but were unable too — which means this incident is either art imitating life or life imitating art. Based on West's exclusivity these days, it may take awhile to find out for sure.
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