MC Hammer was a pop success, but now you could be a pop success while appealing to a core rap audience. In retrospect, Hammer’s lack of that core support has helped to keep him out of the history books. There’s nobody left to advocate for him. Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em still ranks among the best-selling hip-hop records ever, but MC Hammer is mentioned just twice in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, and both are cursory mentions. I asked Chang how someone as big as Hammer was in the early ’90s and seemingly crucial to popularizing the genre could be written out of its history. His answer was surprisingly affectionate:
As someone who made it big from the East Bay, Hammer has my undying loyalty. But 20 years later, I think his story really remains more compelling than his videos, and his videos remain more compelling than his music. Perhaps that is why Please Hammer Don't Hurt ’Em elicits difficult reactions from many of us hip-hop aesthetes of a certain age. He made us and our part of the world less invisible, but his work was too sugary to make us as proud as his triumphant success did.
I was approximately 8 when Hammer broke, so that's my excuse: he was better than Vanilla Ice or New Kids on the Block, which most of my friends were obsessed with, though not as good as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, nor those endless British house singles that I still love to this day. And then there was the KLF, but that's a Monday music post for sometime in the future...
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