Kodak Black Pleads Guilty to Federal Firearms Charge

The rapper faces up to ten years in prison.

August 22, 2019

Kodak Black Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg

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At this point, Kodak Black might have the longest criminal record in South Florida rap history. Over the course of his career, he's been charged with weapons possession, drug possession, violation of house arrest, assault, and, most notorious, sexual battery. His last arrest came in May, when he was nabbed by U.S. Marshals for state and federal firearms violations just before he was set to take the stage at Rolling Loud in Miami Gardens.

Now the results of those charges are in. According to XXL, Kodak pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges Thursday after originally pleading not guilty in May. He will be sentenced November 13 and faces up to ten years in prison.

Kodak's undoing might have been the result of botched paperwork. According to prosecutors, the rapper — who was born Dieuson Octave in 1997 and changed his legal name to Bill K. Kapri in 2018 — was filling out a Firearms Transaction Record to purchase weapons. When he came to a question that asked if he'd ever been charged with a felony, he checked no. The form was flagged due to his 2016 criminal sexual conduct charge (that case is ongoing), and May 13 he was indicted on two counts of making false statements on government paperwork. He's been behind bars ever since.

At the time, Bradford Cohen, Kodak's defense attorney, told XXL he believed the rapper was confused by the legal jargon on the form. After the rapper's arrest in May, Cohen criticized Miami-Dade County Police for leaking a photo of Kodak in custody to WSVN. "I think it’s disgusting," he told New Times. "I think it’s unprofessional. It leads me to believe there is some kind of bias here."

Jail time did not prevent Kodak from courting controversy. Earlier this month, someone shot at City Girls rapper Yung Miami shortly after Kodak threatened her in a leaked jailhouse freestyle.

Douglas Markowitz has covered art and music in South Florida for nearly a decade, with stories published by Resident Advisor, the Miami Herald, the Sun Sentinel, Artburst, Burnaway, and principally the Miami New Times, where he interned in 2017. In 2023 he was named a finalist for the Knight-Esserman Journalism Award. He is a University of North Florida graduate and former culture editor at the Phoenix New Times.

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