Although Kodak rapped about what he wanted for himself, he didn't always believe that his music would get him there. “I felt like, this is not going to work: look where I'm from, I don't know nobody, I'm too young," he says. “My dad wasn't in my life, he couldn't buy me shit. My mom, her money going was straight to the bills. So I was like, fuck it, I got to get my own money. At least if I had money in my pocket, I could get some food when I'm hungry.”

Trouble seemed to find Kodak early on. In fifth grade he got kicked out of school for fighting. He caught his first punishable-by-life charge for carjacking when he was in middle school, and he spent much of his teen years bouncing in and out of juvenile detention centers. And last October, he was pulled over while on his way to New York for CMJ, and was arrested on a warrant that reportedly included charges of robbery, assault, and kidnapping (a representative for Kodak denied to comment on the current status of these charges). He spent his 18th birthday in jail, and while waiting to be released on bail, he read about himself in XXL magazine.

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Kodak speaks candidly when I ask about his brushes with the law. “I kept a clean heart through everything, and my intentions wasn’t bad,” he says. “I didn’t just freestyle it. At the end, it’s about bread.” He is wary, though, that future trouble might affect his present blessings, which include a new house for his mother that he bought using money from shows, and a rumored deal with Atlantic Records. The night before our chat, he played at intimate Brooklyn nightclub Good Room, and today he seems genuinely amused by the fact that he has fans in New York. “I just be taking all that in like—it get better than this shit, don’t even dwell on it,” he tells me. “I’m trying to go away to Switzerland.”