Stop. Hammer Time.

May 2011, Melbourne. 

Picture the scene. A nightclub floor crammed with floppy haired kids, decked out in matching checked shirts and baggy jeans. The DJ is pumping out a Rap tune, everyone on the floor is dancing like crazy. They anticipate the cue. 'STOP'. Everybody freezes. 'HAMMER TIME.' As one, they  break into a united frenzy, running frantically on the spot, smiles beaming, hands waving, co-ordination most definitely lacking. Yep, there were an inevitable few fallers too. (But not, I hasten to add, me, Ash or Mikey; we had this one nailed.)






The year was 1990, the year of MC Hammer. The song of course was ‘U Can’t Touch This.’ For one year this man was the most powerful man in the world. It seemed the words ‘Stop. Hammer Time’ could make even the most self respecting men and women erupt into the running man dance and forget just about everything. For a while you couldn't even drop the word 'stop' accidentally into a sentence without someone invariably shouting Hammer Time. I seem to remember this winding up the one cool indie guy in our gang hugely - Mr Robson you were obviously way ahead of the rest of us.

Fifty million albums, sell out tours, entourages bigger than the Pope’s, prime time TV specials – the Hammer could even sell records about God. You really couldn’t touch him. And he managed to do all this whilst cross dressed in a garish-skirt-cum-trouser combo, dancing like a possessed maniac, and through rap records which demonstrated he couldn’t rap particularly well.

The public loved him and the pop industry loved him. He was the Michael Jackson of the 90’s, with the signature fashion accessory, the signature dance, and the media frenzy. Like Jacko, he had done it by taking a predominantly black music into the mainstream, and for while he was as big if not bigger than the King of Pop himself. Heck, he even had the Weird Al Yankovic parody record to prove it.

Looking back, it’s not so easy to pinpoint why he became so huge. Maybe we were ready to let our hair down. The late 80's were a difficult few years, with Black Monday, the recession, the Iron Curtain, and apartheid. It was all pretty grim stuff. Then along came the Hammer with his infectious showmanship, slick production, and dazzling videos.  The world was ready for a bit of fun. Maybe even Bush, Gorbachev and Thatcher stopped for a bit of Hammer Time that year – it was co-incidentally (?) the year the Cold War ended.   

Seriously it happened.

He hung around long enough to blow his $30 million fortune, which took him by all accounts about 2 years. It hadn't helped that he had failed to share royalties with the artists he stole sampled from, especially Rick James for the riff from Superfreak on 'U Cant' Touch this' - all the more remarkable when you listen to the track. He had started to believe his own hype, take himself a bit too seriously, changing his name, growing his organisation, making even more expensive videos, and starting his own label. Meanwhile the fans had moved on unfortunately for him. We had stopped, Hammer Time was over.

By now he had also alienated almost the entire hip hop fraternity. They claimed he had sold out. Of course they would. He technically had: to the tune of $30 million, and who wouldn't have in his (dancing) shoes. In his defense Hammer had never tried to be anything other than a pop artist, so it was hard to see how he was selling out. Ice-T came to his defense on his 1991 album O.G. Original Gangster:

"A special shout out to my man M.C. Hammer: a lot of people dis you, man, but they just jealous."

Yep, they were. 'U Can't Touch This' should have been it - the classic one hit wonder. He should have followed it up by disappearing into the same hole as Vanilla Ice. That he kept it going a few more years was probably a testament to the man's energy and determination.

If his next album (his 4th) had been any good, maybe he could have lasted. But it wasn’t, 'Too Legit To Quit' being the somewhat ironic title. And just like that he was gone. The rap industry took delight in his demise; he was ripped to shreds by all and sundry. It was relentless. Jay Z was still sticking the boot in as recently as last year. Nobody really missed him. Serious rap fans had long since departed the Hip-Pop onslaught. They found refuge in the underground scene and gangster rap – damn the MC Hamster. 




Apart from 'U Can't Touch This'; MC Hammer left us with a catalogue of largely forgettable tracks like Pray (his biggest hit), Have You Seen Her, Turn This Mutha Out, Yo Sweetness and all.  I recall one other vaguely memorable track from an earlier album called 'They Put Me in the Mix.' Check it out to see what you think. The running man beckons... Time to bust a move.

If Hammer were as big today, no doubt he would have fixed global warming. Instead he does a bit of tweeting and TV work, mainly based on nostalgia, with a bit of music on the side. In 2009 he and Vanilla Ice headlined a show in the States. I hope it was short. These two middle aged men couldn’t keep up the running man for more than their two hit records, surely. Now that is something I would have paid to see.


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Italia 90: Gazza had just heard it was
all over for the Hammer