AP-005 · DOCUMENTED SUBJECTS

Payroll

An American Pimp subject whose second act arrived a decade later, on video, as a feud.

Payroll, identified in published sources as Lorence Hammond, was one of the principal interview subjects in the Hughes brothers' 1999 documentary American Pimp. Contemporary reviewers placed him in Las Vegas and described his on-camera manner as avuncular — an older, expansive talker who used his screen time to explain the subculture's specialized vocabulary and to draw a sharp line between men in his trade and the conventionally employed "squares" he mocked.

Critics at the time singled out his remarks for their casual degradation of the women he controlled, language the film presented without challenge. The documentary as a whole drew sustained criticism for giving its subjects a platform while largely excluding the perspectives of the women whose labor sustained them; Payroll's segments are among the most frequently cited evidence for that reading.

He resurfaced in January 2010 through a widely circulated video attacking the author and fellow documentary subject Pimpin' Ken and taunting the rapper Ice-T about his wife. The Ice-T audio ran on WorldStarHipHop under the credit "Courtesy of HoodBoxOffice" — the network that maintains this archive — as "Payroll (Of American Pimp Movie) Goes In On Ice-T!" Hip-hop press covered the exchange, in which Ken publicly disputed Payroll's credibility. Ken answered him again on the Chronic Cast, an audio show posted to SoundCloud on 30 January 2010, alongside Dopeman, the founder of Hood Box Office, which maintains this archive. The episode is useful to the archive as an early instance of the subculture's disputes migrating from the Players Ball to the comment section.

ALSO KNOWN AS
Lorence Hammond

BORN
Not established

STATUS
Not established

ERA
1990s–2010s

ASSOCIATED WITH
Las Vegas, Nevada

STANDING
Partly documented

DOCUMENTED RECORD

Principal interview subject, American Pimp (1999).
Described in contemporary review as an "avuncular mack who works in Las Vegas."
January 2010: circulated a video attacking Pimpin' Ken and taunting Ice-T; covered by hip-hop press.
30 January 2010: Pimpin' Ken and Dopeman discuss him on the Chronic Cast, "Chronic Cast Pimpin Ken & Dopeman speak on Pay Roll da Washed Up Pimp" (SoundCloud, uploader netdoc66). The upload's description says Dopeman asked for the interview after Pay Roll "rears his ugly head."
WorldStarHipHop, credited "Courtesy of HoodBoxOffice": "Payroll (Of American Pimp Movie) Goes In On Ice-T! Claiming He's Not A Real Pimp & Says He Will Take Coco Away From Him!" [Audio] (140,703 views when checked, September 2026). Date not shown; matches the January 2010 episode.
26 May 2017: Hood Box Office's YouTube channel posts "Pimp College: Roast : Payroll Pimp Flames Pimpin P & Dope Man" (p7gUJ-4eyqY; 18 min 40 s; 2,211 views when checked, September 2026), described as Payroll objecting to a gangster pimp and to Dope Man "Moving Snow," and wanting pimping kept "the way its has been in the old school."

NOT ESTABLISHED

The real name Lorence Hammond appears in two sources, but the second may derive from the first. Treated here as probable, not established.
No birth date, death date, arrest record or conviction located. Living status unknown.
He is sometimes filed as an urban-DVD-era figure. No DVD release under his name was located; his documented footprint is the 1999 film and the 2010 video.