14 DAY TRIAL // A couple of years ago, Kevin Gates, a rapper from Louisiana, was billed the MC to keep an eye out for by several major trade publications, based on newly released material, but he seems to have the ability to make headlines even when his music is not the issue.
The other day, the rapper shocked his 1.3 million Instagram followers and then the rest of the world when the media picked up on the story by revealing that he dated his own cousin for a couple of years. He knew that they were related, hence the controversy.
Public admission
Nothing seems to have prompted the Instagram admission than the fact that Gates found it a hilarious story. He posted a video on his social media, revealing how, at one point, he had been dating a woman for about 3 months and was getting a lot of comments from friends telling him how they were such a good match they looked like brother and sister.
As it turns out, they were related: they were cousins, as Gates’ grandmother confirmed to him in a face-to-face conversion. However, he says, that didn’t put an end to the relationship because they had a good thing going on and he didn’t want to mess it up “only” because they happened to be related and had no idea about it.
When the chemistry is right, you don’t just toss it down the drain like that, he said.
An explanation
The video below is of Gates phoning in to TMZ Live to explain the short video that’s already made headlines around the world. He still doesn’t see what the fuss is all about and he was so OK with the idea that he and the woman were related that he didn’t even bother to try and find out if they were first, second or remote cousins.
“We have a very large family,” he says, adding that it’s hard to keep track of who’s related to whom because of it.
So he chose to ignore what his grandmother told him, because this was a woman he had only met 3 months before and they had a good thing going on. So good it was that they continued dating for another couple of years, until 2008, and neither thought that there was anything “wrong” with the relationship.
They’re still friends, he says. He has no shame or regret about it because, he explains, if you feel ashamed about doing something, then you should probably not be doing that thing in the first place.