TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081390/0813440.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.9 KB | 83 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 73

U Can't Touch Him


M.C. Hammer flies high by making rap a pop sensation

By JAY COCKS -- Reported by Roseanne Spector/Washington


    This man has the stats. He has the moves, the wardrobe and
the attitude too, but he has those numbers cold. Hear him:
"Currently we're on a 60-city tour, selling out everywhere,
including Salt Lake City in Mormon country. Please Hammer Don't
Hurt 'Em is one of the few albums since Thriller to hold the
No. 1 in Billboard -- No. 1 pop, No. 1 black album at the same
time. It's the biggest selling album of this year, bar any --
rock 'n' roll, pop, blues, toe tappin', whatever it is. We went
out and sold 5 million albums in four months. Twelve weeks at
No. 1 on the R.-and-B. charts, nine weeks at No. 1 on the pop
side -- ahead of New Kids on the Block and Madonna."

    Lay that kind of talk on top of a heavy riff and it could
be another slick M.C. Hammer rap, the kind of bouncy,
braggadocian tune that repeatedly hooked the top single spot
for U Can't Touch This. Hammer, 27, is living a dream: super
stardom in a flash; private jet between gigs; movie offers; and
a record label, Bust It Management Productions, to call his
own. And all this by being the first performer to forge an
alliance between two warring camps: the poppers and the rappers.

    Hammer's technique for achieving this musical rapprochement
is typically savvy. Critics have savaged rap for everything
from violence to racism to sexism, but all these elements have
been blended out of Hammer's material. That softening seems,
in part, to be quite natural. Hammer became a born-again
Christian in 1982, and he's simple and sincere when he says,
"I attribute all my success to a blessing from God." But the
softening is also calculated. U Can't Touch This takes a strong
riff from Rick James' 1981 Super Freak (co-writing credit
acknowledged and royalties paid) and works all kinds of
electronic mixing wizardry on it. That "sampling," as the
business calls it, produces an up-to-date, eminently danceable
sound.

    Hard-core rappers who fall for the Hammer are hard to find.
Public Enemy's Chuck D is strongly in his corner, but Hammer
has been called out by the rap press ("cheesy, pop-oriented
production") and torched by fellow rappers from Digital
Underground to M.C. Serch and 3rd Bass, who kept the heat high
in the pointedly titled Gas Face. Hammer handles such criticism
with equanimity. "Rather than cross over [into the pop market],
let's say that I expanded," he suggests. "My music caught on
because the people are ready for it."

    He might have added that they are ready to watch him move
to it, and to move right along with him. His live show features
32 performers onstage at one time, but the indisputable center
of attention remains Hammer. He has dumped the more or less
standard rap choreography (strut, turn, grab crotch, strut) in
favor of a stops-out, Paula Abdul kind of abandon. This boy can
move, which is pretty much what he's been doing since the age
of 11, when he started traveling with his hometown baseball
team, the Oakland A's, as a bat boy and all-around gofer.

    Born Stanley Kirk Burrell, he picked up his stage moniker
from A's players who noticed his resemblance to home-run king
Hammerin' Hank Aaron (the M.C., added later, stands for Master
of Ceremonies, rapspeak for band leader). After a two-year
hitch in the Navy, Hammer borrowed some start-up cash from a
couple of A's outfielders to launch Bustin' Records. He
couldn't play an instrument, and he sang with more enthusiasm
than finesse, but his first album, 1988's Let's Get It
Started, produced three Top 10 singles. And those hits have
just kept on coming. The proof, he'd say, is in the numbers.
If Hammer's music is Rap Lite, it's still a heady brew.