Afroman appeared in civil court on Tuesday while rocking a patriotic, American-flag-style suit to attend his defamation trial over his 2022 music video, “Lemon Pound Cake.” The Adams County Sheriff’s Office is suing him over the video, which uses footage from a raid at his home in August 2022 that resulted in no criminal charges. It shows law enforcement officers ramming down his door and searching his property.
On Tuesday, Aftroman testified about his decision to bring a news crew with him to the Sheriff’s Office to pick up cash officers seized during the raid. He explained that he didn’t want to get “beat up or Epsteined.”
Afroman's "Lemon Pound Cake"
The song title references a moment during the footage in which an officer stares at a lemon pound cake in the kitchen. “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?” Foreman told NPR during an interview at the time. “And the only thing I could come up with was make a funny rap song about them and make some money, use the money to pay for the damages they did and move on.”
Four deputies, two sergeants, and a detective are behind the lawsuit. They are seeking all profits that they say Afroman made with their image. This includes song revenue, music videos, merchandise sales, and concert tickets. They had a probable cause warrant for narcotics and kidnapping, but found no evidence of criminal activity.
"All of this is their fault," Afroman said of the case as a whole. "If they hadn't wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit, I would not know their names, they wouldn't be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs … my money would still be intact."
