Coi Leray Responds To Benzino: “You Take Everything To The Internet”
Coi Leray has responded to her father, Benzino, asserting that he “takes everything to the internet.”
On Monday (Nov. 13), according to Live Bitez, Zino hopped on Instagram to respond to Coi’s claims she slept in cars and sold drugs to survive. Leray explained to Angie Martinez during her IRL podcast that she and her mother struggled while her father was living lavish. “It was hard to eat. My mom was cooking up nickels and dimes. At the same time, I’m like this: ‘How [my father] get to live this life and we over here struggling?'”
The former Source Magazine co-owner asserted that his daughter was lying. He also insisted that he took care of her and her mother when she was growing up.
“Coi never slept in no f**king cars that I knew about,” he said in the clip. “I had my daughter five months out the year. I was with her mother until she was nine and I had her from nine to 16…she lived with me twice, she lived in Atlanta with me and she went to Campbell High School…I was a single dad, and I was taking care of my kids—all my kids—and her two older brothers by two other men that [weren’t] mine.”
As he continued, Benzino hypothesized that his daughter was “brainwashed.” He also asserted that Coi’s record label and the industry are “perpetuating” her behavior.
“She looked like she’s almost brainwashed. She ain’t never slept in no car and sold drugs and all this. I don’t know why she’s running with this narrative…I’ve never seen no sh*t like this. But the labels perpetuating it, the people who run the labels, they all perpetuating it. And then the sad thing is, like, the people who interview her, they’re all down with it too,” he added before name-dropping Angela Yee and Martinez.
The “Players” artist then clapped back in an IG Live of her own. She argued that her father is using her “for clout” and that he struggles with celebrating her success. Coi then explained her confusion at her father not texting or calling her, but instead taking all the drama to the internet.
“It is unfortunate that I have to do this at the most important time of my career when I should be celebrating my success. But the last thing I ever wanna do is look like a liar to my fans. I would never want to be that [or] do that. It’s not my character,” she began before addressing her dad. “Instead of reaching out to me directly, or hitting me [directly] and congratulating me on my nominations, and you know…being nominated for the Grammys…You don’t call, you don’t text, but you take everything to the internet and try to downplay me and try to play victim, try to make it seem like I’m attacking you, trying to make it seem like my intentions is to hurt you and that’s never the case.”
“I deserve to be able to speak my truth, and that’s just a fact. I don’t have to get on here and lie about struggle. I don’t think anybody wants to do that. That’s corny.”
As her 7-minute retort continued, Leray explained that her GRAMMY noms are being overshadowed by family drama. She instead wishes that Benzino would address all of their issues in real life and not for the internet circus.
“I just wish that we could…keep everything offline moving forward. If you have anything to say, you can call Grandpa Tito, you can call my mom. Just how you called me last week asking for what you ask for, you could’ve just hit me direct,” she continued. “I rather you just do that on a respectful level of just me being your daughter at the end of the day. We don’t gotta have a relationship, but I’m still your kid. It is what it is, so just respect the fact that what you’re doing is not cool.”
“It just seems like every single time, instead of you congratulating me and being happy for me, you want to go online and try to use me to prove yourself to these people in this industry on why you feel like you didn’t get the respect, or whatever it is, that you deserve. I don’t want to be a clout kid.”
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