For years, there have been hushed conversations and industry whispers about Kanye West’s sexuality – rumours that, for the most part, lived in the speculative corners of the internet. But with the release of his deeply personal and painfully confessional song COUSINS, paired with a now-deleted tweet that reads more like a diary entry than a publicity stunt, Kanye may have confirmed what many long suspected: that he’s been grappling with bisexuality, repressed memory, and the weight of childhood trauma.
The tweet reads:
“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.
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 mom’s closet were different.
My name is Ye and I sucked my cousin’s dick till I was 14.”
If this reads like a confession, that’s because it is—but it’s also a reckoning. And it’s not simple.
The Trauma Layer
First, there’s the heartbreaking context of childhood sexual exploration rooted in exposure to adult material and possibly abuse. Kanye frames his actions as part of a complex cycle – discovering explicit magazines as a child, acting out what he saw with his cousin, and then later processing the emotional consequences of those moments. These are not just sexual memories. They are traumatic memories, clouded by guilt, confusion, and the burden of secrecy.
The lyric from COUSINS – “That’s when I gave my cousin head” – isn’t offered as braggadocio or shock value. It’s delivered with emotional bluntness, as part of a song that reads like a therapy session. There is no glorification. There is shame, conflict, and a search for truth.
The Question of Sexuality
What Kanye appears to be exploring is not just trauma, but identity – more specifically, how early experiences shaped the lens through which he’s had to understand his own sexuality. The line “I’m not attracted to a man (They thought I was gay)” is revealing. He’s not labeling himself. He’s confronting the confusion. It’s that grey area – the fluidity of sexual experience, the trauma-tangled nature of identity formation – that he seems to be unearthing.
In the past, Kanye has played with gender and sexual norms – his fashion choices, his artistic collaborations, his comments on love and masculinity have often defied traditional boxes. But this feels different. It’s not provocation – it’s vulnerability.
And perhaps that’s why this moment matters so much.
A Public Reckoning in Real Time
This isn’t just Kanye teasing a line or feeding controversy for clout. COUSINS is paired with real-life pain: a cousin in prison for murder, an unresolved sense of guilt about childhood moments, a clear expression of addiction (“Ten Percs to get high”), and suicidal ideation (“pray that I don’t die”). These are not the lyrics of a man trolling for headlines. They’re the lyrics of someone who is either in crisis – or healing, or both.
In a culture that often demands clarity, Kanye is giving us complication. He’s not “coming out” in the traditional sense. There’s no label, no pride flag, no curated roll-out. Instead, there’s pain, nuance, and emotional contradiction. It’s messy. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s real.
Why This Moment Matters
For a Black man – especially one of Kanye’s stature – to speak publicly about same-sex experiences, childhood sexual confusion, and mental health is unprecedented. Hip-hop has long been a space that has silenced or sidelined queer identity, even as it borrows from queer culture. Kanye’s song and tweet don’t just nudge the conversation forward – they detonate it.
It challenges us to think about how sexuality and trauma intersect. About how public figures are allowed, or not allowed, to process those intersections. And about how we, as a culture, often react more viscerally to the disclosure of same-sex experiences than we do to disclosures of violence, addiction, or self-destruction.
Kanye West’s COUSINS is a raw, uncomfortable excavation of memory, identity, and shame. Whether or not he’s “coming out” as bisexual in the traditional sense is less important than what he’s actually doing: breaking silence. About trauma. About sexuality. About the tangled ways our past shapes us.
In a culture that demands perfection or cancellation, Kanye is offering something messier – honesty. It doesn’t come with neat labels or easy takeaways, but it opens the door for deeper conversations about abuse, masculinity, and healing, especially within the Black and hip-hop communities where these discussions are often avoided.
This isn’t a PR move. It’s a reckoning.
And whether you love him or can’t stand him, Ye just gave us something real. Something that might help someone else feel a little less alone.