Kodak Black Protégé Lil Crix Is Ready to Keep You Guessing

Life hasn't always been easy for Haitian-American rapper Lil Crix. Growing up in Lauderhill, he bounced back and forth between his mother's and grandmother's homes.

Crix soon found himself in trouble with the law, serving a prison stint in Illinois. Eventually, he came back home to find his friends trying to jumpstart their rap careers while keeping up with the gangster way of life.

"I'm a gangsta; gangstas meet other gangstas — that's how it's all happened," he tells New Times about how it all started. Those friends eventually encouraged him to start spitting bars, and what seemed like an impromptu recommendation has turned into a burgeoning career for Crix.

Even with millions of streams, Crix only started taking his music career seriously about two months ago. His main goal right now is to get a plaque and land on the Billboard charts — he'll figure the rest out later.

When it comes to his persona, he doesn't deviate too far from the hip-hop playbook. His music videos are filled with money spreads, shiny jewelry, fast cars, and his entourage. They're loud, fast-cut spectacles celebrating the gangster-rap lifestyle.

Still, Crix says there's much more to him than he lets on.

"I'm like Ferb," he says, comparing himself to the popular, quiet child genius cartoon character from the Disney Channel show Phineas and Ferb. It's honestly a fair comparison.
For one, Crix is anything but your stereotypical rapper. He's far from ignorant and one of the more well-spoken guys in the genre. He's also a big reader, with his love for literacy tracing back to summers when his aunt would make him and his cousins read.

"I like to read, especially psychology and stuff like that. I just read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I saw this Dark Psychology book by Margaret Morrison, and I'm currently reading it."

He says his appreciation of literature has boosted his rapping abilities tremendously.

"I highlight a word, and I put it in my notes app, and then I'll put it on a song," he explains. "I just did that with one of my recent songs with Kodak."

Lil Crix's relationship with Kodak Black runs deeper than just a song collab. He's signed to the Pompano Beach rapper's Vulture Love Label and has been taken under Kodak's wing as an apprentice. Crix says Kodak DMed him on Instagram, and the connection between the two took off from there.

"He just texted me at three in the morning to go to the studio, and that's when we recorded our first song, 'Spin the Block,'" he says.

Since then, Kodak has invested in Crix, encouraging him to stay off the streets and stick to the beats. He sees Crix as one of the Sniper Gang's members with the most potential.

"He's a big brother that's like a bully. That's the relationship we got — little brother, big brother," he says. "He's the mean big brother with me, specifically. That's the way. Not everybody else; everybody else is cool. For me, like, I get the fucking tough treatment."

It sounds harsh, but Crix says it's all out of love.
"He got high goals for me. When I first started hanging around him, he was forcing me to rap on a whole bunch of beats. So I appreciate him," he adds. "He's very tough when it has something to do with me, but I'm used to it."

But just when you think you have Lil Crix pegged, he throws you a curveball, like his favorite hobby besides rapping and reading books.

"Hunting — boar hunting," he says. "We went boar hunting; we shot a video and everything. We went to the forest in Kissimmee, and we chased them on ATVs with dogs. It took us like nine hours. We caught one. They ate it; I don't eat pork."

Though rappers going hunting isn't unheard of, he's certainly one of the last people you'd think would have a passion for it. He's very soft-spoken as he continues to talk about his hunting experiences.

"That wasn't my first experience hunting. I did fight an alligator once — I lost, though," he explains. "I tried to grab him and stuff, but it was big, and I didn't want to get bit, so I was very cautious."

It's crazy to think that the guy who likes reading and hunting is also the one who just dropped "I Can't Turn Down." The track is a quick, minute-thirty song that packs a punch with its rapid flow and the South Florida drawl we are used to hearing.

It's also the first of many teasers that Crix has in store for us as he looks to drop a bigger project soon.

"A mixtape. I've been having mixtapes, but I'm working on a new one," he says. "Let's see when it gets released. Hopefully soon. We'll see."