Kim Kardashian Claimed It Was Actually Kanye West Who Started The Rumors That She Cheated On Him With Drake Throughout Their “Whole Marriage,” And It’s Completely Wild

The Kardashians’ Season 3 premiere saw Kim Kardashian get more candid than ever about the messy fallout of her divorce from Kanye West, which was finalized in November after a nearly two-year legal battle.

During one scene, Kim and Kris Jenner discuss the various claims that Kanye, who has legally changed his name to Ye, made about Kim and her family on social media and in interviews, slamming the “insane narrative” he’s spread publicly since their split in early 2021.

“I have to sit here and not say anything, ever, because I know one day my kids will appreciate that, and I know that’s the best thing for them,” Kim says through tears.

And despite telling her mom about the importance of staying “silent through all the lies” for her kids’ benefit, there’s one particular rumor that Kim decided to put on blast.

If you followed Kim and Ye’s marriage over the years, you’ll recall that one rumor that plagued their relationship was the theory that Kim slept with Ye’s rap nemesis Drake.

There’s a lot of history between Ye and Drake, with their entire feud dating all the way back to 2010. However, the claim about Drake and Kim was believed to have originated in 2018 after Drake name-dropped someone called “Kiki” in his song “In My Feelings.”

“Kiki,” if you didn’t know, is one of Kim’s nicknames, and in the song — which was released in June 2018 — Drake questions “Kiki's” love for him.

Fans began speculating at the time that this was a reference to Kim, and a few weeks later, Drake appeared to fuel the rumors yet again on Travis Scott’s song “Sicko Mode,” in which he raps, “I crept down the block / Made a right / Cut the lights / Paid the price.”

Invested in the affair rumors, Twitter sleuths compared the location of Drake’s home in relation to Ye and Kim’s and wound up coming to the conclusion that these lines were pointing to the alleged infidelity.

@tmorrison24 / Via Twitter: @tmorrison24

Around this time, fans also began theorizing that Kim and Drake were subtly communicating via Instagram captions…but this is slightly more of a reach.

Anyhow, a month after the “Sicko Mode” lyrics made waves online, both Kim and Ye spoke out separately to deny all the claims, with Kim commenting on an Instagram post that the affair “never happened.”

Meanwhile, Ye shared a string of videos to Instagram, saying in one, “The fact that it’s people making rumors or thinking that you fucked my wife and you not saying nothing and you carrying it like that. That don’t sit well with my spirit.”

@TeamKanyeDaily / Via Twitter: @TeamKanyeDaily

He also seemed to suggest that it was Drake who made up the rumors, saying at the time, “So when you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know where it came from,’ you’re too smart for that, bruh. You know where that come from. Don’t make no record with nothing that can be confused.”

Unfortunately, Kim’s denial wasn’t quite enough to silence the rumors. In November 2021, Ye revived the affair claims during an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, in which he slammed Drake’s “disrespectful” behavior relating to Kim.

“I had this conversation with Drake,” Ye said. “It’s like, ‘I never fucked Kim.’ But I was like, ‘But you acted like you did. You got bars that’s like, ‘Hidden Hills give your wife the chills.' … It’s like somebody throwing a marble and hiding they hand or something like that. … All that’s disrespectful.”

@ClubAmbition__ / Via Twitter: @ClubAmbition__

Here, Ye was referring to yet another one of Drake’s songs that is rumored to include a reference to the alleged relationship between himself and Kim. On his song “Greece,” with DJ Khaled, Drake raps, “Rolls Royce, baby, in Hidden Hills / Bags full of hundred-dollar bills / Joggin' past your wife and she get chills.”

Despite previously denying any truth to the rumors, Ye made matters more confusing in this particular interview by raising new questions about the nature of Kim and Drake’s relationship.

“But did you ever DM her? Everything else around it, ’cause it ain’t about just the actual act of it,” Ye said before going on to accuse Drake of taking subtle “psychological” shots at him by “[living] five blocks down the street from [him]” and DM'ing “every single girl” in his family.

So to summarize, it isn’t entirely clear where the rumors actually came from. However, Kim dropped a bombshell in this week’s Kardashians premiere by claiming that it was actually Ye who planted the seed in the first place.

“The one that was supposed to protect me, and still does interviews saying they will be my forever protector, is the one that is hurting me the most,” Kim tells Kris. “He was the one that started a rumor that said I was hooking up with Drake, having an affair — our whole marriage he accused me of that publicly.”

She continued, “The person that’s supposed to protect me the most publicly would accuse me of having an affair throughout our whole marriage,” adding, “I really can’t wrap my head around how he thinks he is a protector.”

Interestingly, Kim’s new claims come just a month after Drake appeared to take aim at Ye — and perhaps fuel the affair rumors again — in a track that samples Kim talking about her divorce from Ye.

In his new single, “Search & Rescue,” which was released April 7, Drake raps about finding his perfect match, sampling a snippet from the Season 20 finale of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, where Kim and Kris discuss her divorce from Ye.

“I didn't come this far just to come this far and not be happy; remember that,” Kim can be heard saying. “Yep, I saw it on the internet.”

Neither Kim nor Drake has explicitly acknowledged his use of the sample. However, fans widely speculated that it was Drake’s attempt to subtly reignite his feud with Ye, particularly in light of the fact that the woman photographed in the single’s cover art bears a striking resemblance to Kim.

Needless to say, the Kim-Ye-Drake saga seems not to be over just yet.

You can watch the latest episode of The Kardashians on Hulu now or on Disney+ internationally. The next episode will be available to stream June 1.

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