Who is Kanye West’s cousin in prison for murder and what happened between them?

Kanye West has a cousin who is in prison for murder (Picture: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

Kanye West has made a rare comment – and shocking confession – about his cousin who is in jail for murdering a woman at the age of 17. 

The controversial US rapper, 49, was explaining the meaning behind his new song COUSINS when he claimed he’d had sexual encounters with his cousin as a child, and nodded to his unnamed family member’s criminal past. 

‘This song is called COUSINS about my cousin that’s locked in jail for life for killing a pregnant lady a few years after I told him we wouldn’t “look at dirty magazines together” anymore,’ the US rapper wrote on social media.

‘Perhaps in my self centered mess I felt it was my fault that I showed him those dirty magazines when he was 6 and then we acted out what we saw.

‘My dad had playboy magazines but the magazines I found in the top of my moms closet were different.

‘My name is Ye and I sucked my cousins d**k till I was 14,’ he added. 

The identity of West’s incarcerated cousin – currently serving two double life sentences – has never been disclosed, but he and ex-wife Kim Kardashian have publicly mentioned the individual briefly in the past. 

Kim previously spoke about Kanye’s cousin who he has said he loves despite his murder conviction(Picture: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

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In fact, there’s very little we know about him besides the fact he was convicted of murder at the age of 17, which Kim brought up in the documentary.

Speaking to Marc Howard, president of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice and director of Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, Kim said: ‘[Kanye’s] cousin has a double life sentence for a murder that he committed when he was 17.

Kim also said West’s aunt has accepted her son’s fate, and added: ‘She’s like, “I’m not even that distraught anymore. Like, that’s just what happens to the kids in our neighbourhood.” There’s just no other choice.’

The only other time anyone publicly mentioned the mysterious cousin was when Kanye brought him up in an interview in 2018.

Speaking to Jimmy Kimmel, during a rant about approaching Donald Trump with love, he mentioned: ‘My cousin is locked up for murder and I love him. So he did a bad thing, but I still love him.’

This article was originally published on April 5, 2020.

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