A judge has sentenced Kodak Black, who is awaiting trial for drug trafficking in Florida, to a month in rehab after the rapper reportedly tested positive for fentanyl.
The 25-year-old performer, whose real name is Bill Kapri, tested positive for the drug on Feb. 8 after failing a mandatory drug test on Feb. 3, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, prompting Broward County Judge Barbara Duffy to rule out issue a bank warrant for his arrest.
But Kapri won’t begin rehab until Tuesday, the judge has allowed, so he can play this weekend at the Rolling Loud California festival at the Hollywood Park grounds in Inglewood. Travis Scott, who is also dealing with his own challenges, is the headliner.
Kapri was placed under house arrest in July after being pulled over by the Florida Highway Patrol for his window shades being too dark. After allegedly smelling marijuana, police said they searched the SUV and found a bag containing 31 oxycodone tablets and nearly $75,000 in cash. Regular drug testing was part of the house arrest warrant.
That is what the rapper’s lawyer, Bradford Cohen, told XXL magazine at the time Kapri’s doctor prescribed the oxycodone so he could manage chronic pain after being shot in the foot outside a party after a Justin Bieber concert during the 2022 Super Bowl weekend in Los Angeles.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Cohen suggested to the judge that a star-struck lab tech might have mixed up Kapri’s urine sample or paperwork with that of another patient. Miami announces reported. However, he refused to have his client’s hair tested, which would have shown drug use in the past 90 days.
Cohen did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for additional comment on Wednesday.
“All the good deeds I do, all the good things I do, it never goes viral,” Kapri said, according to the Herald. “I don’t know why (they) are so hungry to see me in prison.”
“You better get it done,” Duffy told him.
The rapper was famously released from federal prison by former President Trump, who commuted Kapri’s 46-month sentence in January 2021 for lying on background check papers related to the 2019 purchase of firearms. Kapri served a separate one-year term for gun possession running at the same time and served his sentence to one maximum-security federal prison in Kentucky. Those charges stemmed from an arrest in mid-2019 at the Canadian border near Niagara Falls.
Trump’s commutation noted that the rapper — who has sold more than 30 million singles since 2014 — had paid for kids’ school notebooks, nursery supplies and food for the hungry, as well as donating $50,000 for restaurants in his hometown of Pompano Beach, Fla. .
In a song celebrating his release, Kodak Black rapped, “Run out of jail, I ain’t say hello to nobody / I want sushi, then some coochie, no more lunch trays, yeah / Had to stop showing everybody where my mama stay, yeah / Trump just released me, but my favorite president is on the money / All the hatred and prejudice have become clear to me.
In April of that year Kapri sentenced to 18 months probation in South Carolina after pleading guilty to first-degree assault of a teenager. The girl said the rapper attacked her in a hotel room after the show, bit her on the neck and chest, and carried on even after she told him to stop, authorities said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.