Rap artist Afroman testifies in court on Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in Adams County, Ohio. WCPO
Cops failed spectacularly at using the courts to clamp down on a critic this week.
That critic was the rapper Afroman, who created music videos mocking sheriff’s deputies who raided his home in August 2022 with a warrant for drug trafficking and kidnapping. Afroman was neither charged nor arrested, and he was not compensated for damages to his family’s Ohio home. But he’s also come under fire for homophobic jokes and possibly backing Donald Trump.
If you missed the details of the case, here’s some brief background: Afroman’s home security cameras captured armed cops breaking down his door and terrifying his wife and children, who were in the house at the time. During the raid, which discovered no evidence of wrongdoing, deputies flipped off security cameras, damaged various belongings, and seized cash that Afroman said was returned short.
According to a VICE interview released in 2023, the rapper, who blew up with the 2000 comedic song “Because I Got High,” said he lost gigs due to the raid, but funneled his anger and feelings of powerlessness at the incident into making viral music videos, including “Will You Help Me Repair My Door” and “Lemon Pound Cake.” Afroman’s videos incorporate his security camera footage, with the latter making fun of one cop who glances down at a cake on the family’s kitchen counter: “They found no kidnapping victims / Just some lemon pound cake.”
In response, seven Adams County deputies captured in the security camera footage sued Afroman in 2023, claiming that he defamed them, used their faces in videos without permission, and caused them to receive death threats and suffer “humiliation, ridicule, mental distress, embarrassment and loss of reputation.”
While there have been countless ridiculous clips of the subsequent court testimony going around, a few struck me as powerful. In one, a lawyer asks Afroman whether he saw one of the officers’ depositions and noted how upset she was about a music video that targeted her.
“She knew I was upset when she was standing in front of my kids with an AR-15 with her hand around the trigger,” Afroman responds, after acknowledging the officer’s hurt feelings. “So I’m sorry for being a victim. Let’s talk about the predators.”
Another comes from a podcast interview of Afroman last month, where the rapper explains that as long as cops are not often held accountable for their actions, they will continue to abuse their authority. “It’s my job to give [police officers] a penalty for violating me,” Afroman says. “It’s not their court’s job, it’s not their peers.”
Put together, these two clips demonstrate a power imbalance where it is up to the “victim” to raise the mere possibility of those in power, like cops, being held accountable for their actions. And in this instance, Afroman has a leg-up on most: the police raid made the news because the rapper has an established audience and access to media and legal resources.
The trial began earlier this week. In the lead-up, he released more music videos about the raid. After singing the title in “Randy Walters Is A Son Of A Bitch,” Afroman delivers the bar “that’s why I fucked his wife and got filthy rich” and dances in front of what appear to be photos of one of the sheriff’s deputies involved in the raid and his wife. As of March 20, the music video currently has over 1.1 million views on YouTube.
The rapper’s lawyers argued that the satirical music videos were free speech protected by the First Amendment and that it was unreasonable to believe that the jokes were factual. After less than a day of deliberation, the jury sided with Afroman on Wednesday.
While the case may help enhance legal protections for people who criticize law enforcement, it also has sparked discourse about Afroman as a person, resurfacing discussions of his possible support for Donald Trump and drawing criticism of homophobic lyrics in a video about the raid. Can the outcome be positive if the subject behind it isn’t necessarily?
Regarding Trump, Afroman told Newsweek in 2024 that he wanted to perform a Hunter Biden–themed parody of his hit song “Because I Got High,” with lyrics altered to mock the former president’s son’s drug use and legal controversies, at Trump rallies in the lead-up to the presidential election. Afroman later posted a photo of himself shaking hands with Trump at the Libertarian National Convention and wrote that they laughed together at the fact that they both were raided by police and had “a lot in common” (Afroman also ran for president in 2024).
And one of Afroman’s music videos in response to the raid targets Deputy Lisa Phillips, the same officer whom Afroman acknowledged was visibly upset during her deposition, is blatantly homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic. The nearly 14-minute video, titled “Licc’em Low Lisa,” features lyrics like “I noticed her voice is a few octaves lower” and “She might whoop out somethin’, somethin’ that’s bigger than mine.” During the latter bar, the music video shows an actor portraying Phillips sitting down and holding what appears to be a large pipe.
But Afroman, whose real name is Joseph Foreman, does not need to be an undeniably good person for people to embrace the outcome of the case: a measure of accountability for institutional wrongdoing. When victims are forced to speak out to try to spotlight abuses against them, the onus does not fall on them to represent any moral standard. Law enforcement officers already benefit from qualified immunity, which allows them to avoid personal consequences unless they violate “clearly established” law, and which, according to the Legal Defense Fund, means in practice that lawsuits must refer to precedents with “nearly identical facts on the record.”
As Afroman said, “Let’s talk about the predators.”
