Kodak Black: Fame, fail, fortune, jail
POMPANO BEACH— When his firstmajor album debuted at No. 3 in the country, rapper Kodak Black was behind bars. Again.
Itwas amoment that defined the rising young musician froma small but rough housing complex in Pompano Beach: the tension between his potential for superstardom and the criminal behavior that keeps getting in hisway.
In theworld outside the jails and courtrooms, Kodak Black is seen as one of the most prodigious rappers of his generation. Millions of kids want what he has: music, money, fame. Momentum.
He’s signed to Atlantic Records, the storied record company that over the decades has been home to big-name artists like Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Coldplay, Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars and Gucci Mane.
The Fader, a music publication, called him “America’s hardestworking teenage rapper.” People in his old neighborhood talk about a quiet little boy walking around with a notepad, constantly writing rhymes. Hewould later say in a documentary produced by the website Worldstar Hip Hop that in school, hewould rap with other kids. But when it came time to perform, they’d all avoid going on stage, except for him.
But almost as much for his music, Kodak Black, whose given name is Dieus on Octave, is knownfor a seemingly never-ending streak of legal problems.
On Wednesday, it all overwhelmed the rapper’s mother, Marcelene Octave, at the Broward County courthouse, where Judge Michael Lynch ruled that her son willfully violated the terms of his house arrest.
“My son!” she screamed, wailing. Inside the nearly empty courtroom, her son, wearing a prison jumpsuit, was still seated, awaiting a courtroom deputy to escort him out. The somber, drained look on his face showed that he’d heard it.
The legal problems aren’t confined to South Florida. Still pending in a South Carolina court is the charge of criminal sexual conduct. He’s accused of sexually assaulting a female fan in a hotel roomwhile hewas in Florence, S.C., to play a show in February 2016. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 30 years.
For whatever talent Octave possess, there’s an equally destructive side.
“Mymamatoldme, ‘Boy, make a decision,’ ” he raps in his biggest single to date, “TunnelVision.” The song title itself is somewhat of a double entendre. It’s an admission that he needs to focus and cut out whatever peripheral distractions keep stalling his rise. But the track’s cover art depicts what could also be an escape route, an underground tunnel, that leads him out of the penitentiary.
Now, as Octave once again faces the potential of years in prison, the question is will he be able to stare down his demons. Or is he out of second chances?
‘Music is his life’
Late last year, Octave’s mother spoke to the Sun Sentinel about her son’s progression.
As a young boy, hewas obsessed with music. Not listening to other people’s music as much as writing his own. It got to the point that she asked around for advice about howto nurture this budding passion. One piece of advice stuck with her. It was to not push him, or stop him, but to just let him keep doing what hewas doing on his terms. So she did.
“When I think inmy mind, music is his life,” she said. “That’s all he likes. That’s all hewants.”
Octave himself spoke to two Sun Sentinel reporters while in custody in the Broward Main Jail in the summer of 2016, before his false imprisonment and drug casewas resolved with the sentence of house arrest. Hewas upbeat and positive.
“I’m just maintaining,” he said.
He talked about his faith in God, about howhe had a notepad with him that he was writing in. He spoke of his young son, then a year old, and how he wanted to get out to “nurture him, be there for him and spend time with him.”
He also had a dictionary and thesaurus, to expand his vocabulary, among other books. Lunch that day, again, was a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
Asked about what he wanted to do when he would be released, he said hewanted to go to the beach. He corrected himself and said hewanted to go to church. He corrected himself again. First a shower, then church. Then the beach, where hewould “wash all of this off ofme.”
He declined to comment about his legal issues.
Golden Acres
Born on June11, 1997, the boy whowould become Kodak grew up in Golden Acres, a small, barracks-like cluster of public housing originally built in the late 1940s to house farmworkers.
Situated off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard west of Andrews Avenue, the community spans just over 80 acres and over 170 units. Like other low-income housing tracts, it’s had its problems over the years with crime, drugs and the like, but it’s also a place where everybody seems to know everybody else, where some of the residents grow sugarcane in the small gardens in front of their doorways.
Residents there talk of the time when some other local would-be rapper wanted to do battle with whoever was the best lyricist in Golden Acres— for money. They found Octave, at the time a reserved, backpack-toting kid, walking home from C. Robert Markham Elementary.
The older guy thought it would be an easy win. Until Octave started rapping.
In early 2013, when he was 14, according to the Worldstar documentary, Octave, then knownas JBlack, released a cover version of “Ambition,” a track by the rapper Wale. Other videos kept coming.
In 2014, having changed his moniker to Kodak Black, a reference to the scenesetting, almost photographic quality of his lyrics, he would release his first mixtape, “Heart of the Projects.” (In hip hop terminology, a mixtape isn’t a cassette, but a compilation of songs that isn’t an official album.)
By 2016, hewould drop three more mix tapes.
With a presence on YouTube and social media, his fan base kept growing. In 2015, Canadian hip hop superstar Drake posted a video of himself dancing to Kodak Black’s song “Skrt.” The exposure was massive.
Accolades kept coming, too. The New York Times declared that Kodak Black “may be an unlikely savior for a hip-hop industry that has lately been preoccupied with melodic-minded Drake clones.” On his home turf in South Florida, hewas embraced by hip-hop and R&B station 99 Jamz.
“From Day One whenwe first started playing Kodak, he has taken our listeners by storm,” said DJ Nasty, an on-air personality at the station.
“Painting Pictures,” Kodak Black’s first official album on Atlantic, was released March 31. It peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart at the start of April.
Given a break
Even as he found that fame, his legal problems continued.
Almost twoweeks after he spoke to the Sun Sentinel, on Aug. 16, 2016, facing a slew of charges in two criminal cases, Octave would be given a break. Looking at potentially years of prison time, he pleaded no contest.
Octave had been arrested in October 2015 in Pompano Beach, accused of forcing several people into a car after he suspected someone of breaking into his house. While released on bond, he was arrested in April 2016 in Hallandale Beach in connection with a suspected drug deal.
In the Aug. 16 hearing, an executive with Atlantic Records heralded Octave’s potential.
“Without question, Mr. Octave has a very bright future as a recording and touring artist,” Michael Kushner, Atlantic’s executive vice president of business and legal affairs, said in court that day.
Judge Lisa Porter, acknowledging that promise, threw him a lifeline, sentencing him to a year of house arrest with the stipulation that he be allowed to leave his house only for work-related activities like recording and performing, and five years of probation.
Octave’s wide smile literally shone— thanks to his mouth full of gold teeth. Also obvious was the jubilation among his family, friends and supporters as they filed out of the courtroomthat day. At one point his mother thanked reporters.
But the joy wouldn’t last. Within hours, as Octave was about to be released from the Broward Main Jail, deputies conducted a routine warrants check. They found two outstanding warrants in his name. Instead of getting out then and there, Octave would stay behind bars— in three different jails— until Dec. 1.
Another chance?
In his violation of probation hearing, his probation officer, Sandra Friedman, articulated the paradox of Kodak Black: smart, polite, amicable, but also prone to self-destruction.
And at the end of the day, young.
Friedman, on the stand, at first came across as unforgiving. But as she continued answering questions, she spoke of her “good relationship” with Octave. She said he’s always been polite and honest with her, always owning up to his mistakes.
But, she indicated, the positive qualities that can endear a defendant to his probation officer can go only so far. He’s close to endangering everything he has, she made clear.
“I think at 19, I don’t think he has amentality yet to be able to handle everything being thrown at him at once,” Friedman said. “I think he needs some people who are looking out for his interests. He needs to deal with his problems, and he definitely needs anger management.
“He needs to have structure,” she said.
The state wants to put Octave behind bars for a maximum eight years for violating his house arrest. At the hearing on Wednesday, assistant state attorney Meredith Hough said the judge last summer gave Octave a “gift” that the rapper has squandered. She acknowledged that, yes, Octave is a successful artist. At the same time, she said, he’s been given the benefit of the doubt before.
She asked the court to treat him like any other defendant in similar circumstances.
“The state’s going to argue that he’s been given chance after chance,” Hough said.
Unlike the state, the probation officer Friedman was recommending 30 days in jail, and one additional year of house arrest, for a total of two years of house arrest.
By May 4, the date of his next hearing, when sentencing is expected to be pronounced, Octave will have served about 65 days.
His lawyers, Allan Stephen Zamren and Gary Kollin, want him released.
Octave could get credit for time served and be released from jail, left to face the changes in South Carolina. Or he could be looking at years in a state prison.
His mother, his family and his friends are waiting to find out whether he’ll go home. And his fans are waiting, too— to see whether Kodak Black fulfills the promise that everyone thinks he has.
brettclarkson@ sun-sentinel.com or 954-254-8533