The Kodak Black Comeback of 2022
"Super Gremlin" was one of the definitive rap songs of last year, how does that square with the rapper's history of ugly comments and sexual crimes?
I’ve been thinking about who had the biggest rap comeback in 2022 and the best answer I could come up with was…Kodak Black. I know just saying that will upset some people, but Kodak’s second wind of relevance says a lot about the moral posturing of our current era.
I was a fan of Kodak as far back as 2015. He won me over with his mixtape, Lil B.I.G. Pac. I thought he had a lot of talent but he was obviously a wild dude who I assumed had a traumatic upbringing. His music seemed too hardcore to have massive commercial potential, so I was surprised when he caught a few hits early in his career, like “No Flocking” (which inspired Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow”) and “Lockjaw” with French Montana. I thought he would be a street rapper, something like what EST Gee is right now. Instead, after establishing himself, he caught even bigger hits like “Drowning,” “Zeze,” and “Tunnel Vision”—all of which are at least 6X platinum.
He benefited from rap’s streaming boom, but there are only so many rappers who have the plaques he does; two gold projects, three platinum projects, five gold singles, five platinum singles, and seven multi-platinum singles. He had a dust-up with 21 Savage last year as they debated who would win in a Verzuz. Regardless of who you prefer, the fact is, at 25 years old, Kodak has enough catalog for a 20-round matchup.
It’s hard to appreciate his career because while he was racking up hits, he was also racking up controversies. The ugly undercurrent that made his music mesmerizing came to the forefront: He went on IG Live while getting head, he made derogatory comments about Lauren London, Young M.A., and dark-skinned women, he was repeatedly arrested on drug and gun charges. Nothing was more damaging to his reputation than his 2016 South Carolina rape charge.
By March 2020, he was sitting in prison for a gun charge. If you would’ve asked me then, “What do you think it’s gonna happen with his career?” I would’ve said it was completely over for him. Not just because he was locked up, but because it seemed like people were no longer going to tolerate an artist who committed heinous acts of sexual violence. Meanwhile, none of his solo songs from 2019-2022 made the Hot 100.
In 2020, at the tail-end of the Trump regime, his prison sentence was commuted by the president (I’d guess he bribed his way to a Get Out of Jail card since his lawyer was a former Apprentice contestant). Kodak, ever thankful, went full MAGA. In April 2021, he took a plea deal in his sexual assault case and got 18 months of probation. A slap on the wrist to go with the red cap on his head.
Though it all, he just kept putting out material. There was plenty of forgettable filler but you only need one song to hit. Although it came out in 2021, “Super Gremlin” was one of the definitive rap songs of 2022. It wasn’t just a platinum smash, but a lasting hit. So many hyped-up rap releases have high debuts on the charts before quickly falling off. That wasn’t the case with “Super Gremlin.” It debuted on the charts in November 2021, peaked at No. 3 in March 2022, and spent 42 weeks on the chart in total. It was an organic, slow build.
The song acknowledges his criminal history and public perception: "I beat them cases, they already hate/When they gon' want me dead when I'm off probation.” Even the hook, “We could have been superstars,” seemed to acknowledge that Kodak wasted his potential with his constant antics.
Soon as the song started winding down on the charts, Kodak was in the news once again as he was a featured voice on Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Critics and fans seemed dissatisfied with that album, and the most common criticism was Kodak’s mere presence. Another reason for this disappointment was that Kendrick gave us a personal, introspective album instead of just “smoking on your top five.” Well, when he stood alongside Kodak on “Silent Hill,” he kinda got smoked—reminiscent of the time another Florida rapper, Gunplay, stole the show on “Cartoons & Cereal.”
Kendrick seemingly featured Kodak prominently on the album because he wanted to litigate whether or not a black man like Kodak was still worthy of redemption. However, the general consensus (at least on Twitter) seemed to be, “Nah, son.”
The complicated politics and critical reception of Mr. Morale aside (that’s another post), the album helped make Kodak a relevant (if still controversial) figure in rap again. Kodak didn’t really capitalize on it, he kept releasing material and not much of it has stuck, his biggest solo song was “Walk” which peaked at No. 100. You might be tempted to think, as I once did, that the reason he couldn’t stick around is that the public too biased against him because of all his evil deeds. That isn’t true.
Hate is the oil that greases the wheels of the viral outrage machine.
Something else that happened to Kodak last year was instructive. During the rollout of her album 777, Latto claimed that an artist wanted to exchange sexual favors to appear on her album. This led to tons of speculation and everyone was quick to point the finger at Kodak, who was a guest on the project. He denied any wrongdoing, and a podcaster claimed the guilty party was Lil Wayne. Kodak reacted to the news writing, “My thing is Why Tf this ain't go viral like that other one when people was just automatically assuming me for no reason???”
First, it wasn’t for no reason. Kodak has an aforementioned history and that’s why people thought it was him. But to answer his question: Lil Wayne didn’t catch the kind of flak Kodak caught because Wayne is a beloved figure in a way that Kodak isn’t. In the late aughts, Lil Wayne was the Best Rapper Alive and became one of the best rappers ever. Da Drought 3 is better than any Kodak project. Lil Wayne has had his share of transgressions (he also went full MAGA) but, he’s never been accused of sexual assault. That doesn’t change what Lil Wayne (allegedly) did to Latto, but it does change the public perception of his misdeeds.
This is to say, people care a lot less when they like you a lot more. The audience’s capacity for blame and likelihood to turn against an artist has more to do with if they like the music they make than their actual bad deeds. If they hold your music dearly, they’re more willing to sidestep your transgressions. Hate is the oil that greases the wheels of the viral outrage machine.
Some actions are a bridge too far. I totally understand someone who says, “Kodak is a rapist so I will never listen to his music.” I happen to fall on the other side of the conversation. Living in a once densely populated town that became a deserted island in the Trump era, I believe in separating the art from the artist. There’s a worthy debate to have about the merits of that philosophy (which I may outline in a future post) but for right now, I’m more interested in what the general audience actually believes.
Kodak’s biggest hits were charting at the same time the #MeToo movement was happening.
As far as I can tell, the rap audience at large doesn’t seem to care about Kodak’s crimes. There’s this idea that Gen Z is more morally attuned than previous generations, which I find hard to believe because Kodak’s fanbase is likely made of Gen Z fans who may not understand the gravity of his crimes but are on social media enough to be aware of them.
For all the moral hand-wringing from critics—who claim victory whenever someone like DaBaby has his career fall apart, attributing it to his homophobic comments, and linking to a viral tweet as proof—it feels like moral posturing. Social media posts filled with denouncement tend to trend, get lots of likes and shares, and we think, “This is what people are saying.” But the charts sometimes tell a different story.
Here’s the ugly fact I forgot until I started working on this post: Kodak Black caught most of his biggest hits after he caught his 2016 rape case, not before. Many of his biggest hits were charting at the same time the #MeToo movement was happening. His cases likely took a toll on him, and maybe his creative output suffered because of it, but the reason he fell off was simply that his music wasn’t as good as before. The second he made an undeniably catchy song like “Super Gremlin,” he was right back on top. It doesn’t mean he was in people’s good graces per se, but he was on their playlists as they looked the other way.
When he sings “We coulda been superstars,” it’s clear now that what held him back wasn’t his antics, it was just his music.
Hey! Great article, dude. Read your piece on Complex about Rubin. As a fellow writer, I also feel the self-doubt, which Kanye has described as the artist’s kryptonite. Slowly but surely, I’m overcoming it. It looks like you are, too. Glad to find you! Keep going. Welcome to Substack.