Rapper Afroman has performed many shows in Colorado and each time he visits, the people here always seem to make him uncomfortable with how nice they are.
“One time I was looking for an address and three strangers came from out of nowhere trying to help me find it. I didn’t know if someone was trying to steal my wallet,” he said with a laugh. “I never been uncomfortable with people being nice ’til I got to Colorado. It was giving me the goosebumps.”
Still, Afroman keeps coming back because of the vibe – “I call it California in the deep freezer,” he said, in large part because of the abundance of weed here.
Fittingly, the “Because I Got High” singer’s next appearance will be at Mile High 420 Fest on Saturday at Denver’s Civic Center park. Other artists slated to perform include Gucci Mane, Big Boss Vette, Tommy Genesis and more.
Afroman will undoubtedly perform his indomitable stoner sing-along and he’s not sick of doing so after all these years. “Because I Got High” came out in 2001, long before the country’s first legal weed sales took place in Colorado. When he wrote the song, Afroman admits he never thought he’d see cannabis legalized.
“I was thinking weed was like cocaine and heroin and every other drug that the police would take you to jail for. So it was just etched in this mind as this forever crime, you know what I mean. I started realizing that it had the possibility of being legal because it was too many smart people smoking it. It was people who had college degrees and doctors and lawyers, and they were smarter than police officers,” he said.
In 2014, the rapper even remixed the lyrics to the song to be less about smoking and slacking, and instead to highlight the positive benefits of consumption. Things like marijuana’s medicinal benefits, its ability to help kick more addictive substances, and its ability to motivate people to exercise.
While Afroman generally considers legalization a good thing, he’s witnessed cracks in the state-by-state model. In 2022, officers with the Adams County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio raided Afroman’s house on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. The rapper was never charged with any crimes, local media reported.
Last November — a year and change after the raid — voters made Ohio the 24th state to legalize recreational cannabis sales.
“By it being legal now, another person doesn’t have to experience that life-threatening episode,” he said. “It takes a crime element out of what we do. I think it’s beautiful.”
Afroman, who was not home during the raid, turned the incident into an album called “Lemon Pound Cake,” which came out last year. The video for one song, “Will You Help Me Repair My Door?” features security footage from Afroman’s house as police raided it. Deputies with the sheriff’s department sued him after its release, alleging invasion of privacy.
Despite the events, Afroman believes he’s won in the court of public opinion. He said his career has reached new heights after a lull in the decades since “Because I Got High.” (Perhaps not totally unrelated was a 2015 incident in which he punched a female fan in the face while on stage.)
Ironically, Afroman credits the Adams County Sheriff’s Department for its role in reviving his image.
“They reinvented me. They brought me back, they made my story interesting again to the point where I’m bigger now than I ever was in my life,” he said.
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Afroman is riding that momentum by starring in a new movie, his first, called “Happily Divorced,” which comes out on Saturday. That day, he’ll also debut new music under the moniker Blunt Brothers, a project he’s doing with rapper Daddy V.
And apparently, Afroman is still running for president, even if his name won’t appear on the November ballot. His campaign, which includes promises of federal cannabis legalization, was launched in 2022 and also inspired by the raid on his house.
What does he think of the Biden Administration’s moves to pardon certain marijuana crimes and advocate for rescheduling the substance?
“I’m happy about anything anybody does good for the cannabis community.”