About Afroman
Joseph Edgar Foreman , better known by his stage name Afroman, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, political candidate, and comedian. He is best known for his 2000 single "Because I Got High", and its follow-up, the 2001 single "Crazy Rap". Both songs were featured on his album The Good Times . Afroman was nominated for a Grammy award a year later.
Afroman was born on July 28, 1974, in Los Angeles, California. He initially grew up in the state of Mississippi before moving back to South-Central Los Angeles at an early age. He later lived in the High Desert Southern California city of Palmdale, briefly in Las Vegas, Nevada, and then Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
The first song Afroman wrote was entitled "Hairy Carrie". He stated it was written during his time in middle school and was a "diss song" about a student known for her cruel harassment of fellow students concerning their appearances.
His musical career began in the eighth grade when he began recording homemade songs and selling them to his classmates. He later recalled: "The first tape I made was about my eighth-grade teacher. She got me kicked out of school for sagging my pants, which was a big deal back then. So I wrote this song about her and it sold about 400 copies: it was selling to teachers, students, just about everybody. And I realized that, even though I wasn't at school, my song was at school, so in a way I was still there. All these people would come by my house just to give me comments about how cool they thought the song was." Foreman also performed in his church at a young age, playing both the drums and guitar.
In 1998, Afroman released his first album, My Fro-losophy, which was described as a "flop". The following year, he released Sell Your Dope and relocated to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he met drummer Jody Stallone, keyboardist/bassist Darrell Havard, and producer Tim Ramenofsky . Afroman attributes his musical success in part to his relocation. In a 2023 interview with DJ Vlad, he stated Midwesterners and Southerners were more willing than people in LA to experiment with their taste in music.
Ramenofsky produced and released Afroman's album Because I Got High in 2000 on T-Bones Records; it was distributed primarily through local concerts and the file-sharing service Napster before its title track was played on The Howard Stern Show. The song humorously describes how cannabis use is degrading the narrator's quality of life. In late 2001, the song became a hit and was featured in the 2000s films Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, The Perfect Score, and Disturbia. "Because I Got High" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance in 2002.
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