Kodak Black’s five biggest music videos
Kodak Black is, it’s fair to say, a controversial figure. He has been accused of some very serious crimes over the years, some of which led to spells behind bars, while he’s also courted criticism for his open support of Donald Trump, who, in 2021, commuted one of his sentences. Kodak, still only 28, is a divisive figure, but his rocky personal life does sometimes find its way into his art in effective ways.
Kodak’s music often deals with crime, be it misdeeds that he has already committed or ones he will in the future. Given the serious nature of some of the accusations against him, this can at times be an uncomfortable feature of his music. But it can also serve as an interesting articulation of what happens to people when they grow up impoverished within a society weighted against them.
The music videos that accompany Kodak’s singles sometimes perform a similar function. Some of his promos can be deadly serious, offering a genuine visual critique of American society as it is presently constituted. Others, meanwhile, can just be a bit of fun. There’s a mix.
Kodak Black has released lots of music videos over the course of his rap career, and plenty of interesting ones don’t make this list. But here, in any case, are five of the best, demonstrating both the seriousness of the artist as well as his capacity for humour.
Kodak Black’s five biggest music videos
5. ‘Patty Cake’
‘Patty Cake’ was released on Kodak’s debut album, Painting Pictures, in 2017, with a music video following some months later. The success of the promo helped to raise Kodak’s profile at this early stage of his career, with the video ultimately racking up tens of millions of views on YouTube. It’s set in a high school, but, instead of a young Kodak rapping through its halls and classrooms in the flesh, a cartoon version of him is instead deployed to do the job.
Cartoon-Kodak enters the classroom, gets up on the desk and launches a bid to become homecoming king, charming his potential supporters with his rapping. He later pulls up to the school dance in a fancy car, wearing a red suit. He performs at the dance, is duly crowned homecoming king, and makes his exit. It’s quite wholesome, evoking any number of high school comedy movies from over the years.
4. ‘Super Gremlin’
The video for 2021’s ‘Super Gremlin’ depicts Kodak rapping in front of a big, white jeep, showing off his lavish lifestyle in much the same way as plenty of other rap videos do. But there’s an odd edge to this particular promo that makes it different to most. There’s a sort of Halloween theme running through it, expressed in the form of shots of Kodak in uncomfortable, creepy circumstances, like one in which he’s tangled up in crime scene tape. But the most unsettling one sees him held in a padded cell, seemingly in some sort of psychiatric institution.
The implication is that Kodak has lost his mind, which is reinforced by the general menacing and dark tone that the video employs. There is, for instance, also a dominatrix who appears throughout the clip, dressed all in black with a horned mask upon her head. But the creepiest part is that she has her lips sewn together. As is often the case with music videos, the meaning of the promo isn’t entirely clear or necessarily coherent, but it’s effective on a visceral level.
3. ‘Zeze’
‘Zeze’ came out in 2018, and it featured Travis Scott and Offset. Scott even took over directing duties for the video, which, unlike some of Kodak’s more serious promos, was definitely intended to be a bit of fun. The premise is that we’re getting a behind-the-scenes peak at a music video being made—it’s all very meta. We see, therefore, a lot of Kodak, Scott and Offset rapping in front of a green screen, the cold, banality of which is difficult to ignore.
The sterile reality of the green screen is presented plainly, which makes it even funnier when they project a bunch of absurd visuals onto it later. There’s a sort of winter wonderland, a volcano, an underwater setting, too. There’s also a scene on the beach with giant female asses dancing and jiggling. It basically is a rap video making fun of rap videos.
2. ‘Calling My Spirit’
Lifted from his second album, Dying to Live, which came out in 2018, ‘Calling My Spirit’ is a personal track in which Kodak reflects on his life and his bleak experience of jail—“Locked up and watching the clock / Locked up, they fighting with locks / Locked up, they swinging they knifes.” The video furthers that angle of the song, albeit in ways that can be difficult to totally follow. While the American justice system is clearly a preoccupation, the video does nonetheless jump around a fair amount.
In one moment, Kodak can be seen sitting on a throne, surrounded by girls in lingerie—the usual sort of braggadious posturing that can be seen in lots of rap videos. But, the next moment, there’s a shot of a man in an orange jumpsuit being handled by prison guards. After that we see Kodak himself in a sort of celestial scene, as if he’s some sort of divine entity. And, through it all, there are also frequent shots of a cat. The meaning of the video isn’t straightforward, but there’s plenty to chew on.
1. ‘Tunnel Vision’
The video for ‘Tunnel Vision,’ released in 2017, is perhaps the most overtly political that Kodak has ever put out. But, in light of the turn his political allegiances would later take, it ends up being a little bit ironic. The clip employs some really striking imagery to highlight America’s racist past and present, including shots of Kodak rapping in front of burning crosses—attached to which, in some instances, are hooded KKK members hanging by the neck. It’s intense.
The video also shows a white man with a Confederate flag on his jacket literally hunting a Black man, but who, after his gun jams, ends up being overcome. Yet before the Black guy kills the white one, a little girl shows up and asks them to stop. It’s quite a powerful little film, but it’s odd watching it with the knowledge that Kodak will eventually endorse Trump. The white hunter in the clip wears a cap that says “Make America hate again,” which, surely, can only be understood as a shot against Trump. But, after Trump later commuted his sentence, it seems Kodak duly changed his tune.