First Thought: His own cousin stole his laptop and blackmailed him? That's messed up.
Second Thought: That laptop was worth $250K? Man, he must have had like a whole new album on there.
Third Thought: Wait, no, Kanye has a laptop he uses to "fuck bitches on"?
You know what they say, third thought best thought. When "Real friends" dropped I was initially equal parts relieved and excited to hear the return of a soulful and honest Kanye West. And then I spent some serious time sorting through its implications, comparing the family life he portrays in "Real Friends " to his past work. And then I tried to figure out what "Real Friends" meant in the context of SWISH. But after all that intellectual flexing, if I'm being honest, I've mostly just become obsessed with the story behind this $250,000 laptop.
Let's intially pause to acknowledge that Kanye apparently not only has multiple laptops, he's got one solely dedicated to his...let's go with "amorous" pursuits, which I suppose makes sense. He doesn't want to be in the studio with Paul McCartney and have Sir Paul see that he's got a folder on his desktop devoted entirely to pictures of American Apparel models. But this isn't a porn laptop, at least not strictly. It's a laptop for "fuckin bitches on," which is far more proactive and confusing than mere porn.
So what? He....would only DM Instagram models on this laptop? This laptop was solely reserved for looking through Backpages escort ads? If "Runaway" is any indication, he mostly used it to email pictures of his wang to various women, and given his experience getting caught, I could see why he'd want that activity hidden on a separate laptop. (Although alternately he could just, you know, make sure he always signed out of his email, but who am I to tell the genius Kanye West the best method of distributing his wang pics?)
"She find pictures in my e-mail / I sent this bitch a picture of my dick"
And then how was it stolen? Was there a member of his entourage charged with keeping track and protecting his sex laptop? Probably not, I'd have to assume Kanye always kept it with him personally; he'd be packing for Hawaii, about to head out the door, and suddenly remember, "Oops, almost forgot the sex laptop" before grabbing it off the kitchen counter and throwing it in his bag. Something that important and potentially damaging you keep a secret and you keep close.
And so did this cousin know the laptop he was stealing was the sex laptop, or did he think he was stealing a musical laptop, only to get home and to his surprise see it filled not with a new album or mind-blowing instrumentals but with aforementioned images of his cousin Kanye's wang?
All of these questions are absolutely ridiculous, I acknowledge that, but at the very least, unlike "Family Business," where Kanye used other people's family stories as his own, I believe this stolen sex laptop story is completely true. Stick with me here.
In March of last year a rumor circulated that Kanye had hired a private investigator to look into a stolen laptop. At the time the world of course assumed that laptop was filled with music, but only because we didn't yet know about the existence of the sex laptop. What if it was in fact the sex laptop that was taken? And then when Kanye's spokesman later vehemently denied that any laptop was stolen, that was a lie. A laptop had indeed been stolen, just not the one we all assumed, and Kanye wanted the story covered up while he negotiated with his cousin for the return of his sex laptop. It only makes sense.
Like that time Kanye rapped about meeting with CIA director George Tenet, it feels like this one will go down in the ever-expanding category of highly questionable Kanye West lines that we'll never get the full story on. But rest assured that I'll remain on the case.
Some stories are just too important to let die.
