Chart-topping US rapper Afroman has been cleared of wrongdoing after Ohio police filed a lawsuit against him, alleging defamation, emotional distress and invasion of privacy after the artist used footage from a police raid on his home in a series of mocking videos.<\/p>\n
In 2022, police searched the rapper\u2019s home for evidence of drug possession and trafficking, and kidnapping. No evidence was found and no charges were filed.<\/p>\n
His wife filmed the raid on her phone, and video recordings were also made on home security cameras. Afroman used this footage to make videos in which he taunted the officers and the judge who issued the warrant. He also alleged his property was damaged in the raid and that $400 in cash had been taken from his house.<\/p>\n
The videos referred to the officers as being from \u201cAdams KKKounty\u201d and made bawdy, coarse jokes about them, including questioning the gender and sexuality of a female officer. The video for the song Lemon Pound Cake \u2013 named after the cake an officer glances at in the raid footage \u2013 has been viewed 3.5m times on YouTube.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit claimed Afroman\u2019s videos invaded officers\u2019 privacy and were \u201cwillful, wanton, malicious\u201d. It also alleged that his actions endangered the officers, who \u201csuffered humiliation, ridicule, mental distress, embarrassment and loss of reputation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Afroman, real name Joseph Foreman, in 2001. Photograph: Shawn Baldwin\/AP<\/p>\n
During the three-day trial, a lawyer for the plaintiffs claimed Afroman \u201cperpetuated lies intentionally, repeatedly, over three and a half years on the internet about these seven brave deputy sheriffs\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Afroman and his legal team defended the videos as comedy, saying they could not be construed as statements of fact. \u201cSome of it is a social commentary, but it is not fact. And everybody knows that,\u201d said lawyer David Osborne Jr.<\/p>\n
One of the videos jokingly suggested that the wife of one of the officers, Randolph Walters Jr, had a sexual relationship with Afroman. \u201cIt\u2019s caused tremendous pain in my life,\u201d Walters Jr said. \u201cI been with that woman since middle school, I would hope she wouldn\u2019t. But you know what, once someone puts it out there for their fun and entertainment, it\u2019s out there, and it\u2019s a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The jury sided with Afroman. \u201cI didn\u2019t win, America won,\u201d he said after the verdict, speaking to local news service WCPO. \u201cAmerica still has freedom of speech. It\u2019s still for the people by the people \u2026 This whole thing is [the police force\u2019s] fault. They broke into my house, put themselves on my video cameras and into my music career. With my freedom of speech, I had the right to talk about the events going on in my life, with my family, with my friends and with my fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Afroman is known for a comical style of rap music, most famously with his 2000 track Because I Got High, which blamed a series of lamentable scenarios \u2013 paraplegia, homelessness, poor sexual performance \u2013 on his drug use. It reached No 1 in the UK charts and the US Top 20. An accompanying album, The Good Times, peaked at No 10 in the US.<\/p>\n
While Afroman never hit similar commercial heights again, he has released 18 studio albums and remains popular on social media and YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chart-topping US rapper Afroman has been cleared of wrongdoing after Ohio police filed a lawsuit against him, alleging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88],"class_list":{"0":"post-533104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}