Kanye West is many things. A fashion mogul. A polarizing political figure. A 24-time Grammy winner. But at his core, he’s a storyteller who has spent twenty years using his family as the primary source material for his art. Sometimes that family history is beautiful, like the soulful nostalgia of "Family Business." Other times, it is dark, messy, and expensive.
If you’ve listened to The Life of Pablo, you know exactly which cousin I’m talking about. You know, the one who basically held Kanye’s private life hostage for a quarter-million dollars.
Kanye Cousin Song Lyrics and the $250,000 Extortion
In 2016, Kanye dropped "Real Friends," a track that felt like a cold shower after the high-energy chaos of his previous era. It was stripped back and honest. He wasn't just rapping about being famous; he was rapping about the isolation that comes when the people you grew up with start seeing you as a walking ATM.
The most jarring line in the song—and the one that sent the internet into a tailspin—was this:
"I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was fuckin' bitches on / Paid that n***a 250 thousand just to get it from him."
He didn't stop there. On the Kendrick Lamar-assisted "No More Parties in LA," he doubled down, calling the relative a "dirty motherfucker" while simultaneously claiming he still loved his family. It’s a classic Kanye contradiction. But was it true? Or was it just another piece of rap hyperbole?
Honestly, it was 100% real.
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Lawrence Franklin, another of Kanye’s cousins, later confirmed to The Daily Mail and other outlets that the incident actually happened. According to Franklin, the laptop was originally a gift Kanye gave to a family member back in 2012. He thought he’d wiped it. He hadn’t.
Another relative—the "dirty motherfucker" in question—allegedly got his hands on the device and found a sex tape featuring Kanye and an unidentified woman. Instead of hitting "delete" or giving it back, he hired a lawyer. He threatened to leak the footage unless Kanye paid up.
Kanye paid. $250,000.
Why This Specific Moment Changed Everything
This wasn't just about the money. For Kanye, $250k is a rounding error. The real damage was psychological. Franklin noted that this betrayal was the "beginning of the decline" for Kanye’s trust in people. When your own blood is willing to sell your most intimate moments to the highest bidder, who do you even talk to?
It’s the reason "Real Friends" sounds so exhausted.
- He stopped going to family reunions.
- He changed his phone number.
- He became obsessed with privacy, eventually retreating to a ranch in Wyoming years later.
The Recent "Cousins" Controversy (2025)
Fast forward to 2025, and the "kanye cousin song lyrics" search intent took a much darker turn. In April 2025, Ye released a track titled "COUSINS" (stylized in all caps) as a single for his project In a Perfect World.
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This song wasn't about a stolen laptop.
It was a disturbing, grunge-inspired confession written by Dave Blunts. In the lyrics and subsequent social media posts, Kanye claimed he had an incestuous relationship with a male cousin when they were both children. He alleged these experiences—which he described as sexual experimentation between minors—contributed to the "dark paths" both he and his cousin (who is reportedly incarcerated for an unrelated crime) eventually took.
The song sampled "Were There Originals" by Double Virgo and featured cover art based on Paul Mathias Padua’s Leda and the Swan. It was vintage Kanye: provocative, traumatic, and deeply uncomfortable for the public to process.
The track was eventually pulled from Spotify in November 2025, but the lyrics remain a permanent fixture of his controversial legacy.
Deciphering the Family Tree in the Music
To understand Kanye's lyrics, you have to look at the transition from the "Old Kanye" to the modern era. Early in his career, cousins were the people he’d "steal food" with at the reunion. By 2016, they were the people stealing his hard drives.
In "Real Friends," he admits he’s a "deadbeat cousin." He forgets birthdays. He doesn't know how old the kids are. It’s a two-way street of neglect. He feels guilty for being distant, but he's distant because he's afraid of being exploited.
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It’s a cycle.
When you look at the kanye cousin song lyrics across his discography, you see a man who desperately wants the "Family Business" vibes of 2004 but can't escape the $250,000 blackmail of 2016 or the trauma revealed in 2025.
What We Can Learn From the "Dirty Motherfucker" Incident
If there's a practical takeaway here, it's about the intersection of wealth and personal boundaries. Kanye’s story is an extreme case study in "success tax."
- Digital Hygiene Matters: Even if you aren't a billionaire, your data is your life. Kanye thought he gave a clean laptop as a gift. He didn't. Always use professional data-wiping software before gifting or selling tech.
- The Cost of Silence: Paying the $250,000 didn't solve Kanye's problem; it just turned his family into a source of paranoia.
- Nuance in Betrayal: Despite the anger in his lyrics, Kanye often repeats that he still loves these people. It shows that family dynamics aren't black and white, even when they involve six-figure extortion.
The saga of the stolen laptop remains one of the most expensive and influential "family secrets" in hip-hop history. It fundamentally shifted how Kanye West viewed the world, turning a soulful kid from Chicago into a man who felt he had to pay for the loyalty of his own blood.
To see how these events influenced his later work, you can analyze the production shift between Yeezus and The Life of Pablo, where the lyrics moved from abstract anger to specific, personal grievances against his inner circle.
Next Steps for Fans and Researchers:
Check the official credits for the 2025 track "COUSINS" to see the involvement of Dave Blunts and Digital Nas, as this project represents the most recent and extreme evolution of Kanye's "family-centric" songwriting. Compare these lyrics to the 2004 track "Family Business" to trace the twenty-year erosion of his trust in his relatives.