For a bunch of men intent parlaying their purported toughness and criminality into cold, hard cash, this generation’s latest wave of emcees with penchants for hitting women seem to have one thing in common: Thin skin.
Wednesday, Kodak sat for an inter with HOT97's Ebro Darden. Ahead of a pending release of his sophomore album, Dying to Live, Kodak and Darden touched upon a few topics of dithering import before Darden addressed the sexual assault case looming over the 21-year-old artist.
In 2017, Kodak, real name Dieuson Octave, was charged with criminal sexual misconduct for allegedly attacking an underage girl in a South Carolina hotel room in February 2016.
According to the warrant for his arrest, Kodak forcibly removed the victim’s underwear and licked her vagina before penetrating her, biting her on her neck and breast.
15 minutes into his interview with Kodak, Darden shifted his attention—in a head-scratching, roundabout way—to Kodak’s trial, which is slated to begin early next year:
Looking at all your cases and everything you’ve been through, and I know the recent one right now is very sensitive and with respect to everybody involved in that case, we can’t get into details today,” said Darden. “But you know, we take sexual assault here serious, and we can’t get into details but we hope to have you back so we could have a deeper conversation about that because, you know, this is a serious topic. And we’re hearing these stories a lot.
Even Peter Rosenberg’s deft deflection was no match for the tantrum of a moneyed Floridian.
Today, Power 105's Breakfast Club made sure there’d be no such static.
Charlemagne and DJ Envy were well prepared to fellate interview the Broward County prodigy, posing for photos and conducting much of the interview in ski masks, a frequent sartorial of the subject of their segment.
On the subject of love, Kodak was ebullient, revealing a recent intimate conversation with his new girlfriend. Sandwiched between a few softball questions and Charlemagne coaching Kodak through reducing his child support payments, the crew got him to touch on his interview from a few days ago.
“The interview was about to end so good” said Kodak, “and shit but he was like ‘Nah I wanna see him react, you know what I’m talking about? I want him to spit in my face or tear this whole radio statin apart,’ you feel me? I felt like that but at the same time, I’m over here sitting down with all these people talking money and stuff like that. If I would’ve showed out and shit, I would’ve scared my money away again.”
Kodak, before moving onto the status of his relationships with other artists, added that Darden would “put the police on [him]’ in the event of a reaction akin to what the rapper claims Darden expected.
“Definitely,” agreed Envy.
Darden, whose station has seen its influence wane thanks in large part to the ascent of Charlemagne-powered hometown rival Power 105, tried to give Kodak an opportunity to show the growth and maturity he lauded so often in his latter interview.
Two days later, Charlemagne, Envy and Angela Yee let him promote his album.