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Notes -
The best way to win as a black man against white cops:
Don't make it about race.
Also, being in the legal and moral right certainly helps.
This is the story of Afroman, a rapper most known for the hit single "Because I Got High". Then his house was raided by the sheriff's office of Adams County, Ohio, based off of... almost nothing, as far as I can tell.
They damaged his door, gate, and security cameras. They were looking for narcotics smuggling and kidnapping victims, but instead found a few blunts and unused pipes, and filed no charges. The repairs cost $20k, not a single cent of which was paid by the officers, who also kept $400 of his cash.
So Afroman did what anyone would do if the cops came and unjustifiably kicked down his door and paid nothing for it: He made songs making fun of the raid, complete with his own security camera footage of the cops. This led to the production of such classics like "Will You Help Me Repair My Door", "Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera", and "Lemon Pound Cake" (about the officer who was eyeing a rather delectable slice of lemon pound cake sitting on his countertop). And in a sane world, this would have been the end of it, and the raid and associated songs would have faded into obscurity.
So of course, the Adams County Sheriff's Department decided to do the dumbest thing possible: Sue Afroman.
Somehow, the case went to trial, with the deputies unironically arguing -- with a straight face -- that Afroman's videos seriously defamed their character and reputation, enough to cause $4 million in damages. This led to a hilarious examination where a female officer cries on the stand as "Licc'em Low Lisa" plays. Afroman played his defense straight, pointing out that the entire situation was caused by the cops fucking up and raiding his house for basically no reason, and that he has a First Amendment right to criticize and make fun of the police. Also, he was wearing a badass suit covered entirely in the American flag.
The jury sided with Afroman.
A couple culture war takeaways here. First, I think the biggest factor in his success was not playing the race card at all, even though he easily could have. Instead, he stood behind the freedoms that every American has, and demonstrated that this could have happened to anyone, black or white. Every American has the right to not have their privacy invaded or property damaged, and when that right is violated, they have the right to speak freely and mock those who violated their rights. The race card would have only served as a distraction at best and polarized the jury at worst.
Second, this verdict could have only happened in America, where there is a strong legal tradition of freedom of speech. If it had taken place in a European country like Germany, where calling the government "parasites" gets your house raided, he would have lost. Having a jury trial was also very important in this case, because the judge was almost blatantly biased in favor of the plaintiffs. If this case had taken place in a country like the United Kingdom, which is seriously considering scrapping most jury trials, he also would have lost. Turns out, jury trials are there to protect the people from corrupt judges.
The point is that though Americans may be stereotyped as being irrationally fearful of a tyrannical government, this fear is entirely justified, and this case is a good example of it. Or at least a good example of how small town cops abuse their power, which seems to happen an awful lot in small towns across America.
Can we cite this as an example if the Streisand Effect too?
However if this were an earlier time when false allegations of homosexuality was considered defamation per se, might 'Licc'em Low Lisa' have been defamatory?
The intersection between a fruitless and perhaps poorly considered search and alleged lesbianism and tendency towards cunnulingus is not apparent to me.
I haven't listened to the song, but I would guess that yes, in an earlier time, implying that someone is a homosexual would be considered defamatory.
The trend in the United States is towards free speech, which I basically agree with but obviously this is not without costs.
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Afroman is not seriously alleging that "Licc'em Low Lisa" does, in fact, licc 'em low. He is making a joke. This is the same guy who sings comedic songs about smoking weed.
This one doesn't land as well as "Lemon Pound Cake" or "Will You Help Me Repair My Door." In those tracks, the nexus between police conduct during the raid and his ridicule is apparent and obvious.
Only two of five verses even reference the raid or her work as a sheriff. The rest is built entirely on her appearance and his assumptions about her sexuality. When you strip away the production and the comedic framing, the song is basically: "A female deputy was involved in raiding my house, she has a deep voice, therefore she must be secretly a man / secretly gay", then an entire track of sexual ridicule built on that premise.
The spoken deposition section actually makes it worse. You can hear Lisa Phillips describing real emotional harm, being harassed at work, being called slurs in public, having to leave shifts because of it, having to defend that she doesn't have a penis. Afroman's apology in that same section is telling: "I didn't know you was a biological lady", revealing the whole thing was rooted in assumptions about her gender and body based on her voice.
There's no allegation of actual misconduct by her specifically. The grievance is about the raid itself, and the "revenge" he chose was to target the most visibly gender-nonconforming officer on the scene.
His other tracks attempt to humorously allege actual deficiencies in police conduct. This one doesn't critique policing or say anything meaningful about the raid. It punches entirely at someone's appearance and perceived sexuality.
In other words: it's a hip-hop diss track.
Not really. Common threads across that genre is that the ridicule connects to something real. Artistic credibility, business betrayals, hypocrisy, actual conduct. The punchlines land because they're built on a foundation the audience recognizes as legitimate.
Even in a genre where personal attacks are an art form, the best diss tracks target what someone did, not just what they look like. Afroman knows how to do that, his other raid tracks prove it. He just didn't do it here.
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