Kodak Black is one of the hottest rappers in the game,
but he’s also one of the most controversial.
He’s racked up billions of streams over his career,
while also being in and out of jail the whole time.
From getting shot outside of a Justin Bieber party,
to beefing with his own homies and throwing $100K in the ocean -
today we’re breaking down the wild come up and career of Kodak Black.
Kodak came up in Pompano Beach, Florida
and started rapping at a young age.
At first it didn’t look like he’d make it in the industry.
He jumped off the porch early and started getting into all kinds of trouble.
Yak and his homies were always starting fights and breaking into houses.
He got kicked out of school in the fifth grade,
and while he was in middle school he got hit with a charge for stealing a car.
Even though he already had a foot in the streets,
Kodak still wanted to make it in the rap game.
In an interview he said the only options he had
were “sell drugs with a gun on his hip or rap.”
While he was in school,
Yak would go to trap house at the end of the day
and record tracks.
And when he was 12,
he linked up with a local hip hop crew called Brutal Youngnz.
The Brutal Youngnz didn’t work out,
so Kodak linked up with a crew called The Kolyons.
He dropped his first project when he was just 16 years old in 2013,
and he followed it up with two more mixtapes in 2014 and 2015.
Kodak was building a buzz in the local scene
but wasn't really popping anywhere else.
But that all changed in October 2015
when Drake posted a video of himself dancing to Kodak’s track Skrt
and featured it on the OVO Beats 1 Radio Show.
Later that month
Kodak signed a deal with Atlantic Records,
but it wasn’t all good news.
Around the same time,
Yak got booked on assault, robbery,
kidnapping, and false imprisonment charges
after he allegedly forced some people into his car
because he thought one of them broke into his house.
Kodak bonded out,
but just two months later he got picked up on drug charges.
Then in February 2016
Kodak was arrested again for allegedly rapping a woman in South Carolina.
He had performed at the Treasure City nightclub
and brought the woman back to his hotel room,
where he allegedly rapped her and left bite marks on her body.
He eventually plead guilty to first degree assault and battery last year,
and as part of his plea deal
the charges were changed so it wouldn’t be classified as a sex crime.
He was arrested again in April for weapon and drug possession,
then in May he was booked on open warrants for armed robbery.
All of the legal issues didn’t slow him down though,
and in June 2016
Kodak was featured on XXL’s Freshman Class.
By August 2016
he had already served three months in jail,
and then he got hit with a year of house arrest
and five years of probation.
He had another 120 days added from one of his possession cases,
and then he was sent to South Carolina to face the sexual battery charges.
He bonded out in December,
and in February he popped off even more in the rap game
when he dropped the track Tunnel Vision.
It was his first time hitting the Billboard top ten,
but later that month
he got booked again for violating his house arrest.
Kodak was also facing an assault case
for attacking a woman in a Miami nightclub earlier in February,
but she decided not to press charges.
One month later,
Kodak dropped his first album
and hit #3 on the Billboard 200.
He was pretty much just hopping back and forth
between dropping hits and getting locked up,
and the trend didn’t end there.
Two months after his album dropped,
Kodak was sentenced to 364 days in prison
for violating his house arrest.
He got out after serving 97 days,
and he kept it pushing by dropping a sequel to his first mixtape Project Baby.
The rest of 2017 was quiet on the legal side.
Fans thought Yak
might finally be switching up how he moved and stay out of trouble,
but in January 2018
he was booked on some serious charges
like weapon possession,
child neglect, and more.
But by this point
Kodak made enough money in the rap game to hire a legit legal team,
and they were able to get the most serious charges dropped.
Kodak was sentenced
to another 364 days in jail,
but he got out in August and dropped his second album a couple of months later.
The album’s single Zeze with Travis Scott and Offset popped off like crazy
and has almost a billion streams on Spotify,
which proved Kodak was still one of the biggest rappers in the game
even with all the legal trouble.
But he didn’t get to celebrate for long.
In April 2019
he was arrested after border agents caught him with a Glock and weed.
He bonded out on that case,
but then a few weeks later
he was booked by the feds
on weapons possession charges
right before he took the stage at Rolling Loud.
Kodak had allegedly lied about his criminal record
while he was trying to buy a gun,
and he ended up pleading guilty
and was sentenced to three years and ten months in prison.
He dropped an album from behind bars,
but it seemed like fans were gonna have to wait a while
before they got to see Kodak in concert again.
But in January 2021,
Donald Trump pardoned Kodak’s sentence and let him out early.
He celebrated by getting back on the grind
and releasing new tracks,
plus a mixtape called Haitian Boy Kodak in May.
And in November
he proved he was still at the top of the game
when he dropped the track Super Gremlin
and hit #5 on the Billboard 100 chart.
Another weird twist in the story came out while Kodak was locked up.
Back in 2019,
DJ Akademiks posted a side by side photo
with one pic showing Kodak out of jail,
and the other half was a recent picture of him behind bars.
Fans immediately pointed out how different Kodak looked in the two pics,
and rumors started flying that Kodak had been cloned
and the government was hiding the real Yak.
The theory died down pretty fast,
but when Kodak got released in 2021
the rumors spread even faster.
Kodak came out of prison
looking like a totally different person.
It looked like he had dropped at least 50 pounds,
got new ink on his face,
and fans thought even his style was different.
The clone idea was a wild theory,
but it picked up enough steam that Kodak ended up speaking on it.
During an IG Live session
he told fans that all the clone comments were making him angry,
and that nobody can duplicate what he does.
After his IG rant
most fans dropped the rumor,
but what came next was even more wild.
Kodak managed to avoid any more legal drama through all of 2021,
but in February 2022
he made headlines again
after he was shot outside of Justin Bieber’s Super Bowl party.
It’s not clear exactly what went down,
but videos show a bunch of people getting into a fight on the street
before shots started going off.
Yak got hit in the leg,
but luckily he made a full recovery.
He was arrested again back in July
when the cops found 31 oxycodone pills
and over $70,000 in his whip,
but his lawyer says the pills are to treat the pain from his gunshot wound.
Besides all the legal drama he’s been involved in over the years,
Kodak has also had a ton of beef in the industry.
One of the most surprising situations is with his homie Jackboy.
Jackboy and Kodak grew up together,
and Kodak signed him to his Sniper Gang label after he blew up.
They started sending shots back and forth last year
over how Kodak was handling the label.
Jackboy wasn’t even being disrespectful at first,
but Yak went off on him
and put their beef out to the public.
Jackboy went on IG Live
and said he wasn’t gonna diss Kodak,
Nah,
Nah that's my brother at the end of the day.
but Yak obviously didn’t feel the same way.
He hopped on Live and said all kinds of wild stuff about his own homie.
Then Kodak took it even further
by posting a video of himself throwing $100K in the ocean
and flushing money down the toilet,
just to prove how rich he was to Jackboy.
Nobody knew why Kodak went off like that,
but then rumors started flying
that Yak had actually stolen Jackboy’s $500K advance
and was charging him $30K per feature.
Nobody really knows what happened behind the scenes,
but it looks like Jackboy is officially off the label.
He started his own label called 1804 Records with Empire,
and unfortunately
it looks like his relationship with Kodak might be done for good.
Jackboy ain't the only one that Kodak has beef with though.
Back in 2017,
Kodak was tight with NBA Youngboy
and they linked up on tracks like Water and Chosen One together.
But later that year
Kodak allegedly took shots at Youngboy
on the track Time Never Mattered,
where he said
“But I hope that I don’t go broke again,
n**** I’m killin’ young babies
Kodak never goin’ broke again, n**** you a free agent.”
Then in 2018
Youngboy’s homie Quando Rondo
burned Sniper Gang merch on video,
so Kodak’s crew clapped back and burned a Youngboy shirt.
After Kodak got hit with the federal gun case and was locked up,
Youngboy shocked fans and dropped the track Letter 2 Kodak -
where he shouted him out and said he missed him.
It looked like the beef was over,
but in 2020
Kodak accused Youngboy of working with the cops.
His ex Iyanna Mayweather stabbed his baby mama,
and reports said Youngboy “fully cooperated”
and let the cops investigate.
Kodak was still behind bars,
but he hopped on IG and wrote
“They hell they mean fully cooperated
LOL.
They ain’t say a lil piece b****,
they say fully b****.
Anyways, man that word ain’t even posed to be attached to your name.”
Youngboy clapped back on IG Live
I ain't never pay attention to a n****,
especially from the mother****** cell n****.
They started sending shots back and forth,
but Youngboy eventually dropped it
and said he was moving on from the beef.
Everything was cool for a while,
and last year
Kodak talked about the situation on the track Dirty K.
He rapped
“My lil brother Youngboy told me he look up to me
I don’t know why but he be feeling like it’s f*** me now
Bout to call him,
tryna see what all the fussing ‘bout.”
After that
both sides were quiet for a year,
but back in August the beef sparked right back up
after Kodak dissed Youngboy’s fans.
He tweeted
“Bra I Like YoungBoy Music
ITS JUST THIS N**** FANS HOMIE!
OR WHOEVER TF BEHIND ALL THIS #YBBETTER S***…”
A week later,
Youngboy hopped on IG to talk about his new album
and at the end of the post he wrote
“Ps. you don’t like my fans I don’t like you “p****” #TLS.”
Then in October,
Youngboy took another shot at Yak on the track Head Busted and said
“B**** I’m cutthroat, to my opp and sure,
I don’t f*** wit’ gremlins.”
Kodak hasn’t responded to the diss yet,
but it’s probably only a matter of time before he does.
Yak has had beef with way more artists in the industry
like 6ix9ine, 22 Gz, Lil Wayne,
Young M.A, and more,
but he’s also one of the most charitable rappers in the game.
He’s given out hundreds of thousands of dollars,
handed out food and water,
and is always giving back to his community.
Kodak has always been proud of his Haitian heritage,
and in 2018
he announced that he was building a school in Haiti.
He’s also donated thousands of dollars to the families of cops
who were killed in the line of duty.
And after he was pardoned in 2021,
Yak donated $150K to charities the first five days he was out.
Kodak has had a wild career full of success and controversy,
and it don't look like that’s ever gonna change.
He’s only 25 years old
but he’s made enough headlines to last a lifetime.
And while some people criticize him
for all of the legal trouble and drama he’s been involved with,
it’s hard to find any rapper from his generation
who has given more back to the community.
He’s a crazy dude for sure,
and there’s no telling what he’ll be up to next.