Kodak Black

Combining vivid street vignettes with the soul of a world-weary blues singer, Kodak Black is one of rap’s great innovators. Just over a decade since he launched his first indelible single, 2014’s Hot 100 sleeper hit “No Flockin,” the prolific and profound South Florida superstar keeps racking up the numbers: 44 Billboard Hot 100 chart placements, 30 RIAA platinum or gold certifications, 26 million monthly Spotify listeners, 25 billion global streams. And yet, it still seems like Kodak’s nowhere near the top of his powers. In the last year or so, he’s dropped three full-length solo mixtapes and been awarded keys to multiple cities including his hometown, Pompano Beach, in recognition of his significant generosity and positive impact. He’s also a game collaborator not only sought out by fellow giants (Travis Scott, Kendrick Lamar, Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, Juice WRLD, Playboy Carti), but also quick to lend his shine to young artists on the rise. One of his generation’s most gifted songwriters, with an one-of-one vocal style that fluidly blends soulful melodies and freewheeling bars, Kodak Black is a force of nature: unpredictable, undeniable, and certain to leave his mark on this world — in more ways than one — for years to come.

So as incongruous as it may seem at first, it actually makes a lot of sense that the man born Dieuson Octave, legally known as Bill Kahan Kapri, and lovingly dubbed Yak by his fans has named his eighth studio album (and 20th full-length project overall) Just Getting Started. That title isn’t some kind of humble brag — he means it. After emerging as a teen and becoming a man in full view of the public, he’s stepping into a new era. He’s minted a bigger, more stately sound that swirls up trap with modern strains of rap and soul. He’s put together a guest list that both illustrates his creative range and is deeply personal — reflecting positive connections in his life, including Chance the Rapper, Pharrell Williams, Chris Brown, Don Toliver, and Lil Yachty. And he’s going deep, unearthing new levels of honesty and vulnerability, owning and acknowledging his public stumbles, and openly sharing each step of his journey on the path into light. Because at the end of the day, he’s still Yak, the wild-eyed savant who speaks sagely of his surroundings — who’s experienced and embodied the good, bad, and ugly, and carved from it a code that makes him something of a modern folk hero: Of the people. A work in progress. A vessel for greatness. 

Of course, Yak just sees the last decade as warm-up, and he captures that open-hearted sentiment over the dreamy new trap-soul cut “Time to Be Free,” croon-rapping bars that sum up this moment: “I’m happy I got another chance at life to be perfect / I’m open to new methods and to finding new purpose / I tend to mis-present myself sometimes to the public / I struggle to find balance and subscribe to disruptions / But I don’t have no problems actin’ on my intuition.”

Just Getting Started is where that proven intuition meets serious intention. Take the instant classic “No Flaggin,” where Yak reinvents the song that launched his career (“No Flockin”) to look back at the road so far and enjoy the view: “Mama had heard me on the radio, then she started shedding tears / Remember when we ain’t had no ceiling fan, now we got chandeliers.” He playfully updates lines from the original, shouts out Cardi B who interpolated the OG for her 13x Platinum No. 1 hit “Bodak Yellow,” and re-ups that timeless, gleeful flow. And then there’s “Imma Shoot,” where Yak spits his grittiest bars over a track that’s been lovingly compared by fans, peers, and press alike to his 2021 smash “Super Gremlin,” which climbed to No. 3 on the Hot 100 and recently surpassed half a billion Spotify streams. Early highlight “Keys to the City” is a cookout-ready cut he dropped to celebrate that titular accomplishment (he’s also received keys to North Miami and San Antonio), while the romantic and radio-ready “Still Get Chanel” freely mixes vulnerability and humor, reveling in the creative chemistry of Yak and Chance.

Over the years, Yak has frequently featured on other artists’ songs, blessing their worlds with his inimitable style. On Just Getting Started, he brings some of their flavor back to his universe with powerful results. With Yachty, he’s “Shootin Craps,” lyrically getting free and having palpable fun over a bounding psychedelic beat. Teaming with Toliver on “Who U Seeing Tonight,” he is an unapologetic modern R&B romantic, singing and rapping his devotion (“Nothing simple about the way I’m simpin’”). Our host also pays it forward on the album, continuing a proud Yak tradition by ceding an entire song, “Yes Indeed,” to emerging artists TTO K.T. and Reign.

That generosity of spirit is key to how Yak moves through music. It’s been a rare two-year gap since his last official album, 2023’s When I Was Dead. In the interim, as he was working on Just Getting Started, he continued to feed fans. He entered 2025 with serious motion following a pair of 2024 tapes that captured his thrilling duality: the haunted and inward-looking Dieuson Octave, titled after his birth name, and Trill Bill, which embraced his “fly, fresh, and foolish” side, to quote the man himself. As if that wasn’t enough, he stuffed holiday stockings with Gift for the Streets, which included a historic partial Hot Boys reunion. To Yak, he was just emptying the coffers, but from the outside, it felt like a culmination following a diverse string of hits including 2023’s “What It Is (Block Boy)” with Doechii, 2022’s “Silent Hill” with Lamar, and 2018’s “ZEZE” featuring Scott and Offset, and, of course, a rich and sprawling catalog of albums kicked off by his Billboard 200 one-two punch debut, 2017’s Painting Pictures (No. 3) and 2018’s Dying to Live (No. 1). He’d grown into that rare raw talent whose reach crosses rap regions, genres, and generations.

Which is all the more meaningful considering where Yak came from — raised by his beloved Haitian mother in Pompano’s Golden Acres public housing project, and faced with two options: sell drugs or slang rap. He started doing the latter in grade school, recording at a local trap house after class, and reading dictionaries and thesauruses in his free time to increase his odds. That striver’s instinct has fueled him since, in low and high times alike — he earned his GED while locked up in 2018, and has long worked to uplift communities and those struggling within Florida and beyond. He’s covered school funds and funerals, supported the families of fallen law enforcement, and developed artists working just like he did to stay on a path that leads away from pain. He’s returned to Golden Acres, too, to donate AC units during heat waves or cover rents during tough times. Last year for his annual Thanksgiving turkey drive, Yak gave out 1,800 birds in honor of the 1800 block he grew up on.

It’s been a winding road to be sure, and Yak embraces that on Just Getting Started — he even exemplifies it on the late-album track “Prison Deform,” which is about as unconventional a song as you’ll find from a music superstar in 2025. For nearly 10 minutes, he raps and talks, sharing his stories and struggles — from run-ins with industry rivals to navigating criminal justice — with all the warmth, humility, no-nonsense philosophy, and bygones-be-bygones spirit of everyone’s favorite uncle at the family barbeque. “I’m Kodak, I paint pictures, vividly,” he says at one point. It’s a reminder that even as he’s become an entrepreneur and philanthropist, and a keeper of the culture shaping music at virtually every level, Yak is still most comfortable shooting from the hip. He’s expanded his range and refined his technique, but from within the steel-strong frame he’s built, he channels every emotion into the work, letting those feelings inform his approach, and, basically, figuring it out as he goes. In other words, Kodak Black is Just Getting Started.