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As Chief, an outlaw hiding in Mexico, the playful Van Peebles wears a dark-colored cowboy outfit similar to the one he sported in “Posse,” and mirroring what his father, Melvin Van Peebles, wore in his 1971 Blaxploitation flick “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.”

Mix-a-Lot’s reference to ‘the rock man’ in ‘Posse’ was a reflection of the crack epidemic and the ‘war on drugs,’ which characterized much of the 1980s.

He returned to acting two years later, playing a newspaper editor in “Posse,” a role that Kirk Douglas, the film’s star, had ordered for him.

“I’m not going to deputize you, Julius. Sheriff says the supervisors are raising hell about the payroll. Hornby out in the Alisal deputized his great aunt and kept her in posse three weeks just before Easter.”

In Posse philosophy, the county sheriff was seen as the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, and he owed a duty to protect the people from federal tyranny.