Being a rapper can get stressful.
From touring to releasing new music to dealing with the press,
artists are constantly under pressure.
But sometimes, when that pressure gets to be too much, they are forced to react.
Here is a look at some of the most famous rappers
who have blown up during an interview.
Kodak
Kodak Black is one of the hottest rappers coming out of Florida,
especially since coming home from prison in January 2021.
Although his career has had some ups and downs,
he’s still one of the most popular artists of the new generation
and with several chart-topping hits and platinum albums.
But Kodak’s career has also been full of controversies,
including an incident where he got up and walked out of an interview with Hot 97,
after the radio host Ebro asked Kodak a sensitive question.
The interview happened on December 12th, 2018.
He was fresh off of the success of his most popular single to date, ZeZe
featuring Travis Scott and Offset.
He was doing a press run to promote his upcoming album Dying to Live.
Kodak sat down with Ebro Darden, Peter Rosenburg, and Laura Stylez
to talk about his music and his lifestyle and at that point and things got tense.
The interview only lasts about 17 minutes and from the beginning it’s awkward.
Ebro starts out by telling Kodak that he wasn’t thrilled to sit down with him,
after seeing his Breakfast Club interview where he answered questions wearing a ski mask.
He also brings up Kodak’s recent arrest for smoking weed
and handling a firearm around his kid while on Instagram Live.
Kodak keeps it light and doesn’t get too heated right off the bat,
although he keeps his answers short
and you can tell he isn’t exactly comfortable with the interview.
For the first few minutes, the conversation is light,
but then Ebro asks Kodak if he likes doing interviews.
Kodak says that he likes it and he just appreciated being free.
Ebro asks if it’s because deep down he knows something bad is coming
and Kodak tells him to “suck a baby ****” .
So, this is your first time going around doing interviews, how you feel about it?
You having fun?
It's great.
I like it
You having fun, what you like the most about it?
Just being out here that's it.
Being free. Yeah.
But you know there's something potentially bad around the corner
so you're enjoying it as much as you can?
Suck a baby ****, that's it.
Ebro did not seem to like this
and continues to mock Kodak’s flow,
bringing up his song “Roll in Peace”,
saying he can’t understand the lyrics, but then follows up by saying it’s a dope record.
Kodak responds by saying he makes his music for the streets
and it isn’t like the bull**** they play on the radio.
The interview continues on with Kodak and Ebro throwing subliminal shots at each other,
while the rapper starts getting more and more pissed.
At the 15-minute mark,
Ebro goes straight into it and tells Kodak it’s a pleasure to meet him,
but he can’t ignore the elephant in the room.
He brings up the sexual assault case Kodak has hanging over his head
yet follows up by saying that he knows he can’t talk about it because it’s an open case.
Looking at all your-
your cases and everything you've been through and I know the recent one right now is very sensitive
and well respect to, you know, to everyone involved in that case
you know we can't get into details today
uhmm
but you know we take sexual assault here serious
He doesn’t exactly ask Kodak a question,
he just lets him know that they take sexual assault very seriously
and he wants him to come back to talk about it after the trial is over.
Kodak was accused of sexual assault back in 2016
after he performed at a club called “Treasure City” in Florence, South Carolina.
A female concert goer says she went with Kodak back to his hotel room,
when he allegedly attacked and sexually assaulted her.
The girl was still in high school and later reported the attack to a school nurse.
After Kodak was arrested later that year for armed robbery and false imprisonment,
the warrant from the sexual assault charge in South Carolina
was discovered by authorities and Kodak has been fighting the case ever since.
Despite being pardoned by Donald Trump in January 2021
for an unrelated weapons charge,
Kodak will still have to go to trial for the sexual assault case.
If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in jail.
So, it’s understandable why Kodak got upset that Ebro brought it up.
Sexual assault is a serious crime and if Kodak did what he’s accused of doing,
he deserves to be punished.
But at the time of the interview, it was still an open case,
and Ebro should have known better than to mention something that sensitive.
Anything that Kodak says in public could be used against him in court,
and being a veteran of the media, Ebro should know that.
He even goes as far as saying that he knows Kodak can’t talk about it in public,
which means he probably already knew how Kodak was going to react.
The next few minutes are some of the most awkward content in interview history.
Ebro and Kodak just mean mug each other for a minute,
while Rosenburg and Laura Stylez sit there awkwardly.
Rosenburg tries to change the subject
by asking Kodak if he thinks the moon landing was fake,
and Kodak clearly isn’t amused.
And for some reason I have a hunch that you would care about,
the idea that landing on the moon was a conspiracy
Kodak do you believe
that our moon landing, in 1969, actually took place
what the **** y'all talking about
Ebro continues asking Kodak if he’s mad that he brought up the case
and Kodak responds by telling him that he feels like the media is just entertained
by real-life situations he’s going through.
He tells them to change the subject or he’s going to walk out.
You seem upset that I brought it up.
I feel like
sometimes like when ****** be going through **** like
y'all be entertained by bull**** you know what I'm talking about?
So like change the subject or I'm finna walk out
Rosenburg tries to jump in again, but Ebro cuts him off
and says that if Kodak wants the interview to be over, it can be over.
So, Kodak does exactly what he threatened to do and gets up and walks out of the room,
telling Ebro to “say less” as he leaves.
We tried to change the subject, we was talking about
the moon landing.
That's bull**** too, let's talk about something else.
What I was saying, I think-
We don't have to talk about nothing else we can be done right here.
Alright, I'm gone
say less
As Kodak walks out
Ebro can be heard saying that the artist won’t tell him what to talk about
on his own show.
It seemed like from the beginning of the interview; Ebro had a plan.
He kept bringing up Kodak’s past criminal behavior
and the comment about his sexual assault charge seemed like it was planned in advance.
That was probably a better conversation to have off-camera,
especially since Ebro knew going into it
that there was nothing Kodak could say about the charge,
other than claim his innocence.
So, it’s a bit pointless to bring it up in an interview.
Kodak has not been back to Hot97 since and is not likely to return any time soon.
But Kodak isn’t the only rapper to get into a tense standoff with the media.
This next artist walked out of an interview when asked about a past beef
and even accused a popular radio host of trying to hook up with him in the past.
Gucci
Gucci Mane is a hip-hop legend and one of the most influential rappers in modern rap.
He is credited with being one of the early creators of trap music
and has influenced an entire generation of rappers
who are currently some of the hottest in the game.
Gucci has had a pretty wild career full of ups and downs
that included beating a murder charge for killing someone sent to kill him,
serving three years in prison for gun charges,
and even being accused of throwing a girl out of a moving vehicle.
The first time Gucci got pressed was during an interview with a radio host
who asked him about his beef with Waka Flocka Flame.
This was back in 2010,
way before Gucci went to jail and decided to turn his life around.
He stopped by a radio station in Richmond Virginia called iPower 92.1
to give an interview and things got awkward.
In the beginning of the interview, Gucci seems to be in good spirits,
chatting about the features he has on his upcoming album.
He then starts taking phone calls from fans and everything seems chill.
But, in the next segment, the DJ takes a break to play some ads
and while they are off-camera,
he asks Gucci about his ongoing beef with Waka Flocka.
Gucci’s whole demeanor changes the next time he is back on camera
and after a few seconds, he gets up and just walks out.
The DJ can be heard asking his staff what the hell just happened,
but Gucci doesn’t seem to care.
Dog what the hell,
what the hell was that?
This was right at the beginning of the beef between the rapper and Waka Flocka Flame.
So, it was still a sore subject for Guwop.
At the time, no one knew why the artists were beefing.
But earlier that same year,
Waka gave a radio interview with DJ Drama
where he revealed that he and Gucci weren’t on speaking terms.
During the ad break,
the DJ told the Zone 6 rapper that his next question was going to be about Waka.
Gucci clearly didn’t want to talk about the subject, which is why he walked out.
The two rappers dropped a collaborative tape together the following year
called the Ferrari boys,
leading fans to believe that the beef had been squashed.
But in 2013, Gucci took to social media
to officially announce that he and Waka were done
and that the artist was no longer on 1017.
It was later revealed that the beef had to do with drama over Waka’s mother,
who was also Gucci’s manager
and the reason they knew each other in the first place,
as well as business disagreements and contract issues.
The two have never publicly reunited, but both have acknowledged
that they are too old and successful to continue a petty beef
and that there is no longer any bad blood between them.
But that wasn’t the only time Gucci had an awkward encounter with the media.
Just after being released from prison in 2016, he gave an interview with the Breakfast Club,
where he claims that Angela Yee tried to hook up with him back in the day.
Gucci had just gotten out of jail about 6 months before the interview
and it was his first press run since being released.
He chopped it up with DJ Envy, Charlemagne, and Angela Yee
and for most of the conversation, things are light-hearted.
Gucci is no longer the same wild figure that he was in 2012 or 2013
when he was beefing with everyone in the industry and high on drugs 24/7.
But about 15 minutes into the interview,
the old Gucci comes out and he confronts Angela Yee for trying to sleep with him.
They were laughing about how intimidating he was
the first time he went on the Breakfast Club
and how that has become an iconic interview.
Angela Yee says that she was never intimidated by Gucci,
because he was always nice to her.
But Gucci says she was intimidated for a different reason.
He goes on to say that the two of them had a history
and that she was scared he would confront her about something else.
Go back and look at that
That's what Gucci said
I said that
What would I've said, what you gonna do to me?
It's not what I would do to you,
it was what I was gonna say to you
You know because we already had a history
Did you smash Angela Yee Gucci? Okay, okay.
Of course not.
Why you say of course, not
I'm saying, comon guys.
She done tried.
She was on my **** back then
That is a lie
I am not lying?
Nah we was cool, I was not on your ****, stop it.
This ***** be texting what hotel you was at and ****
Never
You must got me confused with somebody else
Both deny that they ever actually hooked up,
but Gucci claims that Angela tried to find out what hotel he was staying at
one time he was in New York.
Angela says that he’s lying and Gucci looks her dead in the eye
and says I’m not lying.
That’s the moment you can see the old Gucci come out
and the look in his eye is dead serious.
Angela backtracks and admits that they were cool.
But she never tried to get with him.
Gucci refuses to back down and Angela continues to deny the rumor.
Gucci starts getting very specific
and says that it was after an interview in New York with Melyssa Ford.
Angela still claims he is confusing her for someone else,
but Gucci says he doesn’t know who else it could be.
After that, they move onto different subjects
and the interview ends without any more wild moments.
After the clip went viral,
fans later uncovered the interview that Gucci was referencing.
It was an interview on Angela’s program Lip Service from 2010,
where she is clearly flirting with Gucci.
The conversation gets pretty sexual and at one point, Angela even says
that Gucci “must have a big ****”.
Oh my god,
He must really have a big **** because he always says that
There’s no proof that she tried to hit him up after they chatted,
but many say the video is proof that Gucci wasn’t lying.
Then, in 2019, Gucci posted a clip of him confronting Angela Yee to his Instagram
and claimed that the exchange had gotten him banned
from going on the Breakfast Club ever again.
Angela Yee defended herself by saying that she did not ban Gucci from the show.
But he requested to come sit down for another interview
and she told him that if he wanted to come back, he would have to apologize in public.
He didn’t want to do that, so they didn’t book another interview.
Not long afterward, Gucci did a private interview with just Charlemagne,
where he says that Angela Yee blew the whole thing out of proportion.
But don't never act like you didn't do it
You did, you did.
So say you feel like you disrespected her.
She disrespected herself,
she disrespected herself.
That's what she did,
she shouldn't of a big deal out of something when it ain't a big deal
He says that trying to hook up with him wasn’t a big deal
and she should have just admitted to it instead of getting so sensitive.
He goes on to call Yee a punk as ***** and even throws DJ envy under the bus,
calling him a ***** for backing up Yee’s decision to ban him
without having a conversation directly with him first.
For the record he's not even banned, I don't even know where that came from.
It came from that punk ass ***** man
and DJ Envy he's a ***** too
Envy did it too? Envy is ***** man.
He's *****, he's scared to- scared to call me
The old Gucci comes out once again at the end of the interview,
saying that if he sees Envy again and the energy isn’t right,
he’s going to slap the **** out of him.
He confronted them?
So Imma confront them on what he and Angela did,
***** if he come it wrong, Imma slap the **** outta him.
Charlemagne just sits there looking pretty uncomfortable.
Gucci is pretty openly disrespecting both of his radio co hosts
and claiming to *****slap one of them the next time he sees him.
But if there is one artist in the industry you don’t want to step to,
it’s Gucci Mane, even if he is a changed man.
DJ Envy later took to Instagram
to claim that Charlemagne had played him the interview before releasing it
and he knew the diss was coming.
He said that it wasn’t the first time that he’d been threatened by an artist
and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
He didn’t try to get Gucci banned,
but he did say that he wasn’t interested in doing an interview
if his co host wasn’t comfortable.
He was simply riding for the team
and Angela had every right to defend herself from Gucci’s comments.
Since then, Gucci has not appeared on the Breakfast Club.
Hopefully, one day they can put the beef behind them
and have Mr. Zone 6 back on the show to drop some more gems
and create a new viral moment.
But, after calling one host a punk ass bitch, and threatening to slap the other,