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.