Sometime in the early 2000s, my college band ended up on a split-bill with Afroman. This was extra exciting if nothing else because, like most people our age, we saw Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in theaters and - when those closing credits rolled and we all heard “Because I Got High” for the first time, nobody left the theater.

The movie was fine, but that song was magic. We wanted to know where they found it. How it could be so perfectly on brand. What level of truth was in it versus imagined. I am pretty positive, given the time, somebody illegally downloaded it from Napster or LimeWire and immediately ripped it onto a CD for all of us to listen to.*

So we are doing this gig with Afroman at a local multi-floor nightclub that caters to college kids and we are wondering what to expect. We get there early to setup, soundcheck, and do the things, including get to meet Afroman and the small group he was traveling with. After some back and forth, he explains to us - and this is entirely anecdotal and based on 20+ year old memories here - that in his view they were barely a real band, they were just having fun, and he was still in shock about the hit song. With the most humble and complimentary way of doing so, he suggested we should alternate sets and expect their segments to be pretty short, but we’d all have a good night.

“But you’ll close and encore THE SONG, right.” “Well of course we’re gonna do THAT.”

I remember asking if he wanted to sit in or do anything together. Just for fun and, partly because I figured it’d be amusing. He assured me, with same humor and humility that he’d pass, because he simply was lucky to be doing any of this, and didn’t want to sully our more serious undertaking with his self-deprecating view of what he was doing.

That stuck with a 20-something me. The professional boundaries. The way it wasn’t insulting at all, to me or to him, and how he just felt like he had what he needed, he was going to get paid because these people wanted to pay him, and the rest of the night was just going to be the rest of the night, and he wasn’t sure how many more of these would fall into his lap.

I decided that night I really liked Afroman. I liked a guy who was clearly smart and funny but got insanely lucky and he didn’t try to make anything more of it. Any time I hear his name or one of his songs I think about that night.

Which brings us to this week when he was suddenly everywhere.

Real life court room dramas don’t play out like Law and Order episodes over the course of an hour. This one took years. If nothing else, the occasional reminders were fun though, because that suit he was wearing on the viral clips, he showed up in court wearing it - and my immediate reaction was to think how I still really like Afroman, and that’s more than I can say about a lot of pseudo celebrities from the early 2000s.

If you missed all of it, I’ll attempt a short summary.

In August of 2022 a bunch of local cops execute a search warrant at Afroman’s house in Ohio, citing potential drug trafficking and kidnapping. It’s unclear how the warrant got issued. What is clear is that his home security camera setup and his wife’s phone capture the cops breaking down the door, turning the house upside down, and noticing a lemon pound cake on the counter.

Since nothing is found in the house, no charges filed. But they destroyed the guy’s house, so Afroman complains.

Thinking over his situation, and watching the security footage, he gets an idea. He starts writing songs and making music videos compiling the footage. It becomes a creative exercise of sorts.

The first song, “Lemon Pound Cake” basically tells you everything you need to know about what happens next:

There are more songs that follow. “Will You Help Me Repair My Door” is a country-tinged anthem for the ages. There’s, of course, more video footage in there. The cops don’t like this.

But it’s a form of protest. He also starts making money off of it, which he in part uses to recoup the damages of the raid. It’s a nice little promotional push, too, given the absurdity of it all.

Everything is fine and funny on the internet until seven law-enforcement officers file a civil lawsuit. They want him to take down all of the content and to be paid about $4 million in damages.

When the ACLU hears about this, they back Afroman, and it all becomes a free speech issue (as it should).

For a musical interpretation of this part, check out his “Freedom of Speech” song and video below. I imagine it will get taught in high school civics classes in the future (again, as it should).

That song came out relatively recently and was part of the slow burn (re: non-Law and Order speed) due process. From 2023-2025, he didn’t let up on creating, touring, and making merch on this stuff.

The story came to a head in mid-March 2026, when it went viral again. Afroman appeared in court wearing the same insane American flag suit he'd worn in all of his videos.

He says he’s defending the First Amendment. The deputies explain their side - the harassment, the losing of a “dream job,” the online trolling, and part of me wants to feel bad for them. They were just doing their job, right? And I do feel bad for them. A little.

And then, towards the end of the trial, Afroman testifies that any fallout these people received is ultimately no one else’s fault but their own, because they’re the ones who performed a baseless raid that traumatized his kids and wrecked his property, and all he was doing was telling his fans what had happened.

It’s hard to disagree with that.

The judge and jury didn’t disagree with that.

Have some integrity in your work. Is that the lesson? That’s the lesson.

All 13 claims were shut down, and Afroman said, “We did it, America… Freedom of speech!”

The guy just wants to be himself. That's what he showed me 20-some years ago, and I still believe it.

(OK, I can’t resist, as dumb as this is to say so, sorry but not sorry. Say it and groan out loud with me)

And to think, this all still only happened because he got high…

*Full transparency: I'm not a stoner. I don't "partake." Part of me is paranoid I need to explain this, which - yeah, that's my baseline anxiety talking. I like stoners for their snacks, but the actual getting high point never worked for me. I am - naturally - full of attention deficits, hyper focused on weird details to the point of missing everything else going on around me, and filled with enough baseline anxiety that an accidental weed muffin I once ate is all the cautionary tale I need.