Trivia / MC Hammer

• Chart Displacement: Most younger listeners would be surprised to hear that "U Can't Touch This" was the lowest-peaking of his five top-10 hits. Part of the reason for this is that "U Can't Touch This" wasn't commercially available as a single until months after the release of Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em - this was a deliberate strategy to build more album sales, as listeners would have to buy the whole album to get the song.
• Creator Killer: He was a Hip-Hop superstar in the early '90s, but the Gangsta Rap boom caused his goofy, PG-rated persona to go out of style, which led him to adopt a Darker and Edgier image on his 1994 album The Funky Headhunter. It alienated his existing fanbase, who saw the new, gangsta-flavored Hammer (he dropped the "MC" from his name) as a betrayal of the parents and kids who made him famous, and was mostly laughed at by actual gangsta rappers, who saw it as a ridiculous and shallow pose and a desperate attempt to stay relevant. After the failure of The Funky Headhunter, Hammer's Conspicuous Consumption caught up with him, causing him to file for bankruptcy in 1996.
• One-Hit Wonder: Retroactively, he is only remembered for "U Can't Touch This", even though he not only had five top 10 songs, "U Can't Touch This" was the lowest-charting of the five.^note "Pray" was his biggest hit at #2, followed by "Have You Seen Her" at #4, "Too Legit To Quit" at #5, and "Addams Groove" at #7. For all its pop-culture relevance, "U Can't Touch This" only got as high as #8 on the charts, although it did hit #1 on the U.S. R&B charts and #1 overall in several countries. Most of those other hits are forgotten these days, except maybe "Too Legit to Quit".
• Troubled Production: Some of his music videos:
  • According to director Ric Minello, an unspecified MC Hammer video involved being filmed in a club late at night. Allegedly some gang members were out to kill Hammer that night. Someone spotted some people outside carrying uzzis and alerted the crew. Police were notified and the club was evacuated. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but it was a terrifying experience for everyone involved and certainly a surprise that it was MC Hammer of all people that was targeted.
  • The videos for "2 Legit 2 Quit" and "Addam's Groove" were shot simultaneously. Hammer, high on his recent rise to fame, had huge ambitions for both.
    • The crew had to rebuild the sets for "Addam's Groove" because they weren't big enough the first time. Anjelica Huston decided she wanted to be in the video, but she had a vacation coming up so they had to rush her appearance. Charles Addams, who created the Addams Family, had a widow who had complete creative control over the video and was constantly at odds with director Rupert Wainwright.
    • "2 Legit" in particular had a complicated storyline involving a parody of The Hero's Journey. It involved a sequence where Hammer wanted James Brown to appear. There was a problem, though, James Brown was in jail at the time. So, Wainwright had to work with the Georgia Department of Corrections to make sure he would be let out of jail on time. Hammer also insisted that Brown was transported only via private jet, which Hammer was paying for out of his own pocket. Hammer's notorious rivalry with Michael Jackson was getting on crew members' nerves. There were also multiple versions of the video with different lengths, causing confusion for viewers and networks. On top of that the massive amount of cameos and celebrity appearances proved to be a headache for Wainwright to keep track of.
    • Wainwright recalled the experience as "lasting for 30 days, but feeling like 60". Both videos were made fun of and were the beginning of the end for Hammer as his public image started deteriorating. While they both have their fans, they're frequently cited as two of the worst music videos ever made.
• What Could Have Been:
  • "Pumps and a Bump", the song that was ultimately the Creator Killer for him, had 2 music videos - the official one (which showed him dancing in a zebra stripe thong at a party) and a second one (Which showed him and some backup dancers wearing black Atlanta Falcons jerseys). The Rap Critic speculates that had the latter been the official one, it would've aged better, noting that the song itself isn't bad, but the music video makes it impossible to take the song (and, by extension, Hammer) seriously.
  • Prior to the rise of Gangsta Rap, he was actually seen as rap's possible answer to Michael Jackson simply because of the energy he put into his shows. Odds are that had he not changed his style, or at the very least, adapted better, he might have stuck around longer (at the very least, he would have fared better in the long run).
    Todd in the Shadows: Pop rap wasn't dead in the nineties. It had more of an edge, but it was still successful. After Biggie and Pac died, everyone wanted to cool things off. Will Smith's big solo push was just three years away! Hammer could have waited it out!
  • A video game, Hammer vs Evil D. in Soulfire was planned for the ill-fated Sega CD. A side scrolling game with shooter elements, you play as Hammer converting criminals (and street gangs, and...ghosts, for some reason) into members of his posse by infusing them with Soulfire. Whatever that is.

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