Lifestyle
Afroman prevails in cops’ music video defamation suit after a brief but viral trial
A jury sided with apper Afroman, whose legal name is Joseph Foreman, in a defamation lawsuit brought by Ohio police who raided his home.
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
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USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Afroman was just trying to turn lemons into “Lemon Pound Cake” when he started making music videos and social media posts mocking the law enforcement officers who conducted a heavy-handed raid on his Ohio home.
Home surveillance video of the August 2022 raid shows half a dozen gun-wielding law-enforcement officers from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office deputies kicking down his door, combing through his CD collection, going through his suit pockets, flipping through a wad of cash and, in one case, briefly getting distracted by a cake dish on the kitchen counter.
The search, on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping, didn’t yield any evidence or charges against the rapper, whose legal name is Joseph Foreman. But he says officers broke his gate and security surveillance wiring, took $400 in cash and frightened his family. He wasn’t home at the time, but his wife and kids, then 10 and 12, were present.
“I asked myself, as a powerless Black man in America, what can I do to the cops that kicked my door in, tried to kill me in front of my kids, stole my money and disconnected my cameras?” Afroman told NPR in 2023. “And the only thing I could come up with was make a funny rap song about them … use the money to pay for the damages they did and move on.”
The rapper, best known for early aughts hits like “Because I Got High” and “Crazy Rap (Colt 45 and 2 Zig-Zags),” made waves again with the 2023 release of Lemon Pound Cake. Its 14 songs have titles like “The Police Raid,” “Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera” and “Will You Help Me Repair My Door,” featuring home surveillance footage in the music videos.
He also posted memes and sold merchandise satirizing the incident and the people involved. Common themes range from poking fun at the deputies’ appearances (comparing them to Family Guy’s Peter Griffin and Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame) to more serious allegations of extramarital affairs and pedophilia amongst department members.
Afroman called his approach “the smartest, most peaceful solution.” But the sheriff’s deputies disagreed. The seven law enforcement officers sued him in 2023 for defamation and invasion of privacy, saying his unauthorized use of their likenesses hurt their reputations and made it harder to do their jobs. They sought the content’s removal and $3.9 million in damages.
That didn’t stop Afroman from releasing increasingly personal songs about the deputies involved, including one ahead of his trial this week called “The Batteram Hymn of the Police Whistleblower.”
“They vandalize my property, my money came up short / they disconnect my cameras because they are a poor sport,” he sings while marching solemnly in an American flag suit. “They’re the predators and the victims and they’re suing me in court / my proof’s on the Internet.”
The three-day trial focused on heavy topics like policing and free speech, though there was no shortage of viral, sitcom-esque exchanges. On Wednesday, after less than a day of deliberations, the jury sided squarely with the rapper.
“I didn’t win, America won,” Afroman, 51, told reporters outside the court, dressed in his American flag-patterned suit, tie and aviators, topped with a white fur coat. “America still has freedom of speech. It’s still for the people, by the people.”
NPR has reached out to both the Adams County Sheriff’s Office and its lawyer, but did not hear back in time for publication.
A quick recap of a quick trial
Both sides clearly felt wronged by the other, but the primary question before the jury was whether Afroman’s response to the raid counted as protected free speech. He and his lawyer argued it did.
“I got the right to kick a can in my backyard, use my freedom of speech, turn my bad times into a good time,” the rapper said from the stand. “Yes, I do, and I think I’m a sport for doing so, because I don’t go to their house, kick down their doors, flip them off on their surveillance cameras, then try to play the victim and sue them.”
He also said none of this would have happened if they hadn’t raided his house: “This whole thing is their fault, and they’re suing me for their mistake.”
But Robert Klingler, representing the deputies, framed it to the jury this way: “A search warrant execution that you think was unfair … doesn’t justify telling intentional lies designed to hurt people.” He said a verdict in their favor would “make up in some way for what they’ve been through.”
Several of the law enforcement officers testified about how Afroman’s actions affected their personal and professional lives.
Shawn Cooley — the now-retired deputy who was caught on camera checking out the cake — said he’s received “hundreds of poundcakes at work from different people” and was even recognized by cops while working cases in other jurisdictions, in addition to his own community members.
“I had one guy come out of a bedroom after me, call me a thief and want to know why I stole Afroman’s money,” Cooley said. “It just went from being a nice, quiet community, a job you felt safe in, to a place where you had to look over your shoulder every second.”
Another, Brian Newland, said he was forced to quit his “dream job” with the sheriff’s office due to Afroman’s claims of him being a pedophile, which he denies. Deputy Lisa Phillips cried on the stand about one of Afroman’s more explicit songs that questioned her gender and sexuality.
When asked if he saw that, Afroman acknowledged that Phillips was upset by the online trolling, “just like I was upset when she was standing in front of my kids with an AR-15 in her hand around the trigger.”
“But I’m not a person, she is,” Afroman added. “So, I’m sorry for being a victim, let’s talk about the predators.”
In addition to traumatizing his family and damaging his property, Afroman maintained that the deputies stole money from him. They seized thousands of dollars in cash from his home, which Afroman said was payment for a gig, but returned it $400 short. The sheriff’s office has explained the discrepancy by saying deputies originally miscounted the money, which Newland took responsibility for on the stand.
The defense only called one witness: Rhonda Grooms, a teacher and the ex-wife of sheriff’s deputy Cooley. She was asked whether she and her students were familiar with the Cardi B song “WAP,” which stirred controversy with its overtly sexual lyrics in 2020, and testified that none of them took the words literally.
Afroman’s lawyer, David Osborne, pointed to other explicit rap songs to argue that artists tend to exaggerate for the sake of entertainment (at one point he argued that no one listens to Lil Wayne’s song “P***y Monster” and says “there’s a monster in that song”).
He said that’s what Afroman was doing in his songs, and that many of the terms that deputies found offensive were not facts but matters of opinion — like one that calls Sgt. Randy Walters a “son of a b***h,” which Osborne said there was no definitive way to prove or disprove.
“She’s been dead for years,” Walters replied matter-of-factly, prompting a chuckle and condolences from the defense lawyer.
In his closing statements, Osborne pointed to rap as an established form of social commentary, saying police and public officials are called names online all the time, whether or not they like it. And he rephrased the plaintiff’s question about what a liable verdict would mean.
“What does this message send if we find that music and social commentary, while maybe not the most tasteful thing in the world, is silenced because a public official [was] hurt by it?” Osborne asked.
Viral moments put the case in the public eye
Some of the most fever-dream-like moments of the trial took off in social media clips: Afroman defiant in his American-flag suit, deputies soberly discussing lemon pound cake, the defense lawyer’s garbling of Cardi B’s name.
Many of the commenters remarked that by bringing the case to court, the deputies brought it to the public’s attention. Several highlighted the irony of an invasion of privacy case going viral online, calling it an example of the “Streisand effect” (named after Barbra Streisand’s 2003 lawsuit to remove a photo of her home from the web that only brought more eyes to it).
The”Lemon Pound Cake” music video has 3.8 million views on YouTube as of Thursday — and the top comments are all about the trial.
“Shout out to the cops for making sure I saw this absolute bop!” reads one with over 8,000 likes.
Afroman, who said on the stand that he did an estimated 250 shows last year, acknowledged that the attention had boosted his follower count, which is almost 600,000 on Instagram alone.
“All the publicity from the officers’ lawsuit on me is running up my numbers,” he said.
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
Admission: I suffer from eyestrain. Even right this very second. As a reporter working on a computer more than eight hours most days, my eyes often feel fatigued and itchy by evening.
I’m not alone: More than half of the U.S. population lives with computer vision syndrome, also known as digital eyestrain, and nearly 16.4 million Americans suffer from dry eye syndrome. So I was especially excited to stumble on New Vogue Spa, in the City of Industry, which offers a relaxing, if intriguing, treatment called “Eyeball Care” — something I’d never heard of before at a day spa.
New Vogue Spa is an Asian-style spa with Korean and Chinese influences. The spa’s offerings include massages and body scrubs — I was curious about the “Red Wine Body Scrub” — but I couldn’t help exploring eyeball care, which was much needed after my 50-minute drive from Silver Lake. (The City of Industry is about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. without heavy traffic.)
So it came to be that I found myself lying on a massage table, wearing what looked like protruding diving goggles, with clouds of cool, aromatic steam oozing from both sides of it and engulfing my face. A spindly plastic tube extended from my forehead to the “Eye Spa” machine. Serene spa music, a blend of classical piano and loudly chirping birds, trilled in the background as the machine sloshed and gurgled. It felt like lying, creekside, in a spa robe wrapped in a blanket of chamomile and rosemary-scented fog.
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As my esthetician, Jenny Chen, adjusted the eye mask and added essential oils to the mist, New Vogue manager Lesley Xie explained that the 60-minute, $125 Eyeball Care treatment aims to hydrate and stimulate blood circulation in the eye area, decrease puffiness and dark circles and aid eye fatigue and dry eye syndrome.
“It’s really helpful for overall eye health for people who are on computers for a long time or sleep really late or who are reading a lot,” she said.
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1. The Eyeball Care treatment included a mask filled with cool, aromatic steam to help relieve fatigued eyes. 2. Slippers in the Himalayan Salt Room.
Xie said that eyeball care treatments are common in China. When she was growing up in Guangdong in Southern China, elementary school students were given a break every afternoon to perform “eye exercises,” which involved gently massaging pressure points around their eye areas, for 5-10 minutes.
“It released eye stress because we studied from eight o’clock in the morning until almost noon time,” she said. “It was a break for our eyes to prevent nearsightedness and tired eyes.”
New Vogue Spa’s treatment was supremely relaxing from the onset — part Head Spa, part facial, part eye care. Chen began by massaging my scalp for about 10 minutes, as I tried not to fall asleep.
Next she cleaned my face, applied massage cream and gently massaged my face and eye area, manipulating the outer corners of my eye sockets as well as under my brow bones and on my temples. She was precise and firm but careful — as she pressed on the outside corner of my eye, I felt tension draining down the side of my cheek and neck.
Esthetician Jenny Chen conducts “Golden Eye therapy” on reporter Deborah Vankin.
Xie said the massage is based on traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on stimulating acupressure points around the eyes.
“Gentle massage of these areas is believed to help promote blood circulation, relax the muscles responsible for focusing and relieve visual fatigue,” she said. “While it’s not a medical treatment for vision conditions, it’s widely used as a preventative and restorative method.”
The massage was followed by “Golden Eye therapy,” during which Chen used an electronic device on my face with a metal roller ball on it. It uses “ultrasonic vibration technology,” Xie said, to help the skin absorb the applied moisturizing cream and combat eye puffiness.
The main event was the “cooling steam therapy,” which Xie said was meant to be calming and refreshing and help relieve tired eyes. Chen fitted me with what looked like an enormous diving mask that quickly filled with cool, hydrating mist — I felt droplets of water dripping from my eyes and down my cheeks. The Eye Spa machine uses a “cold mist atomization process,” Xie said, “that disperses micro-particles of moisture combined with soothing essential oils.”
At the end of my treatment, Chen gave me under-eye gel pad masks, for added hydration, while conducting one last head massage. She applied moisturizing eye cream, face cream and sunscreen before sending me off.
Dr. Kristina Voss, an ophthalmologist with Keck Medicine of USC, was enthusiastic about the Eyeball Care treatment.
“It sounds wonderful. Anything that makes you feel good, I generally support,” she said. “It sounds safe because they’re not putting pressure on the eye. Direct pressure on the eyeball [is dangerous]. And I’d be nervous if they were putting something in the eye, but they’re not. Steam, or even cool condensation from a humidifier, is effective for dry eye. Massaging pressure points probably doesn’t treat dry eye, but could potentially treat eyestrain or tension headaches that can be interpreted as eyestrain.”
Los Angeles Times features writer Deborah Vankin inspects her eyeballs after her treatment.
Temporary relief aside, however, Voss warned that the treatment is not a replacement for seeing a doctor if a condition is ongoing.
“It’s relaxing and complementary to a doctor’s dry eye treatments — like medicated drops or in-office treatments — but it’s not a simple fix or cure all,” she said. “Ongoing doctor’s care would be important.”
After my treatment, I was invited to linger in the co-ed Himalayan Salt Room and Red Clay Room or woman-only spa area, complete with a warm soaking tub, lounge area and treatment rooms for body scrubs. (I skipped the adjacent New Vogue MedSpa, where you can get botox, dermal filler or microneedling treatments.)
Guests are also treated to a cup of homemade snow fungus tea (made from tremella mushrooms) with a single jujube, or red, date, floating inside. New Vogue makes a fresh batch every morning for guests, simmering the collagen-rich drink so long it becomes somewhat gelatinous.
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1. The Himalayan Salt Room. 2. The co-ed lounge area. 3. The Red Clay Room.
“Snow fungus focuses on deep hydration and skin plumping, while red dates support circulation and a healthy glow,” Xie said, calling the concoction “a warm bowl of snow fungus and red date soup.”
I can’t speak to the medicinal benefits of snow fungus tea. But after a glass of the warm, woody-tasting drink — together with the hour-long tension-taming eye treatment — I saw the world in a whole new way while walking out the door: clearly, from a relaxed perspective and with the bigger picture in focus.
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