Many readers may know Afroman as a staple of hip-hop, a legend in the community, and an artist more popular than those we usually feature on Start-Track. However, due to his involvement in current events and the importance of the unjust court case against him, we felt it was in our and our readers’ best interests to post Gimp Leg’s write-up of Afroman’s latest single, which is – of course – dope as hell. Please enjoy.
In August of 2022, Adams County, Ohio police raided Afroman’s personal residence with a warrant alleging drug trafficking and human trafficking. In the execution of that raid, police broke the front gate on his property, kicked in his front door, confiscated a few hundred dollars in cash, cut the cord to his home surveillance cameras, and one officer may or may not have eaten a slice of homemade lemon pound cake that was on his kitchen counter. Charges were never filed against Afroman. No evidence of crime was found. And when the police eventually refunded the money, over $100 was missing from the seized assets.
To raise awareness and funding to repair the damages, Afroman wrote a couple of songs about his experiences, and in those songs, he used footage from his own home surveillance cameras (before the officers cut the wires) and mentioned the names of the officers. The first two songs were “Lemon Pound Cake” and “Will You Help Me Repair My Door”.
The police then sued Afroman for defamation and for using their likeness in his video. To be clear, in the US, you do not have exclusive rights to your likeness. Police use your image without your permission when they release body camera footage. You do not have a right to privacy in public. You definitely don’t have a right to privacy when you are in someone’s personal residence and their home security cameras capture your image. Police are public servants who have less right to privacy than the general public. The actions of police are deemed an issue of public concern. Your First Amendment freedom of speech, press, and right to redress your government all protect you for showing and discussing the actions of the government, even by name and image.
The civil trial in the police officer’s lawsuit against Afroman started on March 17th. To commemorate the beginning of the trial, Afroman released a couple more songs discussing the case. The first one – this one – is “Batteram Hymn of the Police Whistle Blower”. It’s set to the beat of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, an American patriotic song written by a woman and abolitionist in 1861 who helped fund John Brown’s rebellion before the Civil War.
The instrumentation in Afroman’s “Batteram Hymn of the Police Whistle Blower” is a simple acoustic guitar set to the rhythm of the aforementioned “Battle Hymn”. Lyrically, the song is a recap of the entire story laid out in the first paragraphs, including the bad informant, the nature of the raid, the destruction of property, the lawsuit suing him, and all the details mentioned above, set in perfect rhyme and rhythm to the Battle Hymn. In the video, once again, Afroman shows the officers’ faces and names and calls them out for their actions.
The song is an incredibly bold yet perfectly appropriate “Fuck you” to the Adams County Sheriff’s Department, with the chorus “My proof’s on the Internet”. The song even calls out the prosecutor who brought charges and the judge that signed the warrant. Unsurprisingly, he testified in court on the first day in the trial as opposed to pleading the Fifth. If Afroman is going to lose this argument, then this week’s videos are gonna add to the penalty, but he’s betting that the law is on his side, and I think that’s a safe bet. At this point, it seems the only thing the police are doing is giving him ammunition and free press to promote his music. ACAB.
Listen to “Batteram Hymn of the Police Whistle Blower” below.
Written by Gimp Leg
