South Florida rapper Kodak Black is accused of violently abusing the mother of two of his children and failing to pay child support amid a contentious custody dispute playing out in Broward County court, according to police reports and court documents.
The rapper, who was recently honored with the key to Pompano Beach, has not faced any criminal charges pertaining to the alleged domestic violence. Meanwhile, his ex, Maranda Johnson, 23, was arrested at the courthouse on Aug. 7 after showing up for a custody hearing, charged with smashing the windshields of his luxury cars in 2024. She also faces a misdemeanor charge over getting into a fight with a woman at their daughter’s birthday party in Wilton Manors in January.
Johnson’s attorney, Jodie Bassichis, described the recent arrest as an “intimidation tactic” against her client. Since Johnson started fighting for custody and child support, she has faced a flurry of lawsuits and the two separate criminal cases this month. She was served with one of the lawsuits while sitting in jail Thursday.
“All I wanted was to get away from a toxic relationship and have Dad do his part as a father,” Johnson told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Saturday.
But Black’s attorney, Bradford Cohen, says his client, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, has never been charged with domestic violence against Johnson and has always financially supported the two children they share, a 1-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.
“The only thing I know about is there are criminal cases pending against Ms. Johnson and none pending against Mr. Kapri,” Cohen said, pointing out that Johnson had also faced a charge of burglary with assault last year, which was later dismissed.
The timing of the arrests and lawsuits has nothing to do with the custody case, he added, saying that cases “naturally evolve when evidence is produced and when individuals make statements.”
An emergency pick-up order, allegations of violence
The custody case began in February when Johnson filed a motion for an emergency pick-up order before Broward Judge Lauren Alperstein, saying that Black had taken their son in January following the fight at the birthday party, telling her she would never see him again.
Until Black left with their son, Johnson said, she had been the sole caretaker for their two children since their relationship ended in March 2024. She wrote in the motion that she had not seen their son in weeks and she did not believe he was with Black, pointing to news stories depicting the rapper eating chicken in the middle of the street in Atlanta, the 11-month-old nowhere in sight.
Alperstein granted the pick-up order later that month, and their son has since returned to Johnson. But the fight over custody and child support continued. Black’s family attorney, Vanessa Prieto, filed a motion for full custody in February, writing that Johnson had tried to attack the rapper at their daughter’s birthday party.
The party had erupted into several fights after Black brought three mothers of his children to the party who were “unhappy to see each other,” according to a probable cause affidavit for Johnson’s arrest. The rapper has five children with four different mothers.
“(Johnson) became extremely jealous and erratic, and in a fit of rage, attempted to attack (Black) while he was holding his baby,” Prieto wrote in a motion for full custody. The affidavit states that a woman told officers that Johnson punched her in the face. Officers observed “a very small scratch consistent of a fingernail scratch” on her face. Another witness told officers that one mother “attempted to fight Black three times inside the venue.”
Black’s motion argued that he should have full custody under Greyson’s Law, a Florida law that requires judges to consider domestic violence while making custody decisions, countering the state’s mandatory presumption of 50-50 custody. Prieto told the Sun Sentinel that, since then, Black has decided to seek 50-50 custody, but had temporarily requested full custody “due to the violence of the mother.”
Johnson denied Black’s allegations. Rather, she argued in court filings that she is a victim of domestic violence by him. She is seeking sole custody, also citing Greyson’s Law and pointing to Black’s prior arrests, including in South Carolina, where he was charged with raping a girl who was still in high school; he later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of assault.
In April, two months after the custody case began, Johnson went to the Coral Springs Police Department with Bassichis, her attorney. She laid a series of photographs on the table, each depicting different injuries, then detailed how Black had caused them, according to a police report about the interaction.
The violence began in June 2023 and became increasingly intense before their breakup in March 2024, Johnson said, according to the police report. Over the course of a year, Black had repeatedly beaten her, including while she was seven months’ pregnant. Throughout the relationship, Johnson did not tell the police about the abuse, saying she wanted to protect him. Then, in March, she said he punched her so hard that he dislocated her jaw, according to the report.
Afterwards, Johnson smashed the windshields of several of Black’s cars with a brick, leading Coral Springs Police to arrive at the home in response to an alarm. At the time, they wrote a report about the vandalism but did not file charges.
After Johnson left the police department in April, the report states, officers called Bassichis “requesting Maranda return to take a sworn statement.” But they said Bassichis “refused and advised that she had already been at the Police Department and was not returning.”
Bassichis told the Sun Sentinel that Johnson was hesitant to report Black in the first place and that police could have taken her sworn statement while she was already at the station. She was under the impression that police were not moving forward with the case, regardless of whether her client gave a sworn statement.
A spokesperson for Coral Springs Police told the Sun Sentinel that “our department did thoroughly investigate it, but at some point she refused to provide a sworn statement. We investigated everything thoroughly, all of the allegations.” The case remains open, pending the sworn statement.
A fight over child support
Now that Johnson has left the relationship, she says, her main concern is receiving financial support for her children. But she has argued in court filings that Black has barely paid any.
At the same time as juggling full-time care of two toddlers, Johnson has been trying to work as a real estate agent, make music and do reality TV to make more money. Black has made two child support payments, Bassichis said, but still owes two years of retroactive child support, and she had to fight to get him to agree to pay for daycare and school. The rapper makes about $1 million a month before taxes, according to Johnson, who has argued that he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on watches, diamonds for his teeth and a private jet, but still has not bought their son any clothes.
“It’s a lot just doing it all alone when their dad is more than capable of helping,” Johnson told the Sun Sentinel.
Black’s attorneys say any allegations that he has not supported his children financially are “100% false.” The rapper has voluntarily agreed to pay child support and has paid for the last two terms of the childrens’ schooling as well as the upcoming year, Prieto said. He also paid Johnson $100,000 in January 2024, which Johnson argued was not a child support payment because the two were living together at the time and it was intended to furnish the house they shared.
“You could furnish the Taj Mahal for $100,000,” Black’s attorney Cohen said, questioning how the money was spent, adding that Johnson “just doesn’t want to give up the lifestyle.”
Allegations of retaliation
Since the custody battle began, Johnson has faced a flurry of legal actions. In April, a group of companies affiliated with Black and represented by Cohen sued Johnson over the vandalism to the cars. In May, Black sued Johnson for defamation, saying she had falsely described him as a “Dead Beat Dad.” And in July, prosecutors filed separate charges against Johnson for both the January birthday fight and the car vandalism, the case that led to her arrest at the courthouse on Aug. 7.
The recent charges stem from the victims in both cases coming forward around May of this year, according to police and prosecutors, months after the incidents initially occurred. Prosecutors received both cases from police the same month and filed the charges — battery and several counts of criminal mischief — two months later, according to Paula McMahon, a spokesperson for the Broward State Attorney’s Office.
Johnson has pleaded not guilty in both criminal cases and is seeking to halt both lawsuits, saying the parties did not properly serve her. Bassichis has also filed a motion in the vandalism lawsuit seeking to add Black as a party and counter-sue him for domestic violence and theft, saying he “personally committed violent assaults and thefts upon the Defendant, who is now being sued on a retaliatory and pretextual basis through these corporate entities.”
A little after 5 p.m. on Aug. 6, the day before Johnson’s arrest at the courthouse, Cohen emailed Bassichis, telling her that canceling a custody hearing over a motion for an order to show cause would be in Johnson’s “best interest.”
“I am telling you again, it’s in her best interest to delay the Order to Show Cause and let’s negotiate a global resolution,” he wrote. “I am almost pleading with you for Maranda’s sake. Ultimately you are going to do what you feel is right for your client, I can tell you going forward tomorrow is not it.”
The hearing went on as scheduled. Judge Alperstein set a date for Black to be deposed and for the two to undergo mediation. Johnson was arrested after the Aug. 7 hearing concluded. Black did not attend.
Johnson was released from jail late on Aug. 7 on $12,500 bond.
Concerns raised over children’s safety
While Black seeks 50-50 custody, Johnson and at least one other mother have raised concerns about the children’s safety under his care.
In 2023, Jammiah Broomfeld filed a motion to change their shared timesharing to primary custody. In one instance, she wrote that Black refused to return their child to her. When Broomfeld tracked his location, she found him and their 8-year-old son leaving a strip club in Pompano Beach.
“The Mother fears that the Father is increasingly exposing the child to the lifestyle of alcohol, drugs, sex and violence and putting the child in danger,” her motion says.
No action has been taken on the motion in the two years since it was filed.
In Johnson’s case, the rapper was ordered to have three supervised visits with the two children before he can return to unsupervised time. But he has canceled or missed all of them, Bassichis said, according to court records. In June, a guardian ad litem wrote in a report that Black had not shown up for a scheduled supervised timesharing. He then discovered that the rapper was livestreaming on Instagram “and there were allegations that he was under the influence of meth.”
Black’s attorneys disputed the statements about the rapper missing visits with his kids or having substance abuse problems, saying there were scheduling conflicts that caused him to miss timesharing. They emphasized their desire for a resolution to all of the cases between Black and Johnson so that the two can co-parent.
“My client wants nothing more than to do that and co-parent with the mother and raise the children together,” Prieto said.