{"id":666725,"date":"2026-03-19T11:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T11:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/666725\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T11:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T11:44:17","slug":"afroman-wins-lemon-pound-cake-lawsuit-over-raid-turned-music-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/666725\/","title":{"rendered":"Afroman Wins ‘Lemon Pound Cake’ Lawsuit Over Raid-Turned-Music Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the summer of 2022, members of the Sheriff\u2019s Department in Adams County, Ohio, raided Afroman<\/a>\u2018s home with a warrant on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. After busting down his door and ransacking his home<\/a>, armed officers found neither drugs nor any signs of a kidnapping. No charges were filed.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing the debacle, Afroman turned lemons into lemonade, transforming footage of the botched raid into a series of music videos that have gone viral \u2014 particularly one titled \u201cLemon Pound Cake\u201d that shows one of the officers pausing in the rapper\u2019s kitchen to eye a tasty treat on the counter.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat video, as well as social media posts the artist made with the raid footage, became the subject of a lawsuit filed the following year by seven cops who claimed Afroman (real name Joseph Foreman) used footage of their faces without their consent (a misdemeanor violation in Ohio) and sued him on civil grounds for invasion of privacy.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Wednesday, following a three-day trial in which Afroman defended his art in court, the jury sided with the rapper on all counts and disagreed with the cops\u2019 claims that he owed them a combined $3.9 million in damages. Shortly after the trial ended, the rapper posted a video to his social media of the judge reading the verdict in court. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe trial in Adams County this week raised questions about the limits of First Amendment protections and the freedom of artistic criticism. In 2023, the ACLU of Ohio wrote\u00a0an amicus brief<\/a>\u00a0in support of the rapper. \u201cThis case is a classic entry into the SLAPP suit genre: a meritless effort to use a lawsuit to silence criticism,\u201d the ACLU wrote in\u00a0the brief.\u00a0\u201cPlaintiffs are a group of law enforcement officers who executed what appears to have been a highly destructive and ultimately fruitless search of a popular musician\u2019s home. Now they find themselves at the receiving end of his mockery and outrage, expressed through a series of music videos about the search, as well as spinoff merchandise and social media commentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their lawsuit, the seven officers claimed they had been \u201csubjected to threats, including death threats\u201d and had also \u201csuffered\u00a0emotional distress, embarrassment, ridicule, loss of reputation and humiliation.\u201d\u00a0During the trial, the officer that Afroman had dubbed \u201cPolice Officer Poundcake\u201d on social media said he had been sent numerous pound cakes at work. Another officer cried as a video made by the artist mocking her played for more than 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMr. Foreman perpetuated lies intentionally, repeatedly over three and a half years on the internet about these seven brave deputy sheriffs who\u2019ve lived in this county for years, risk their lives for this county for years, done their job,\u201d Robert Klingler, the deputies\u2019 attorney, said during his closing testimony, per the Washington Post<\/a>. \u201cMr. Foreman did it intentionally. Mr. Foreman knew that what he posted on the internet were lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tAfroman\u2019s attorney, David Osborne,\u00a0emphasized that the case was about free speech and musical expression. Pointing to Afroman, who was sporting a suit covered in the American flag, the rapper\u2019s lawyer said: \u201cDoes this look like a man who thinks that everybody\u2019s going to assume that everything he\u2019s saying is fact?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his own testimony, Afroman said, \u201cThe whole raid was a mistake.\u201d He added, \u201cAll of this is their fault. If they hadn\u2019t wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit. I would not know their names. They wouldn\u2019t be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs. Nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the summer of 2022, members of the Sheriff\u2019s Department in Adams County, Ohio, raided Afroman\u2018s home with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":666726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[281125,356,171,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-666725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-afroman","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116255671404683439","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}