That's not what happened. Minaj claimed "a friend of a cousin" had a simply impossible side effect. This is pretty clearly a simple case of an urban legend being shortened from "friend of a friend of a friend" and so the rumor always gets passed on as "friend of a friend" no matter how many links there are in the chain.

Did you notice that you shortened it from "Minaj claimed a friend of a cousin..." to "Minaj claimed a friend...?" Hey, you're human too just like all of us. We suck at passing along rumors.