By Kenneth Partridge | January 13, 2015 12:10 PM EST

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/6436624/u-cant-touch-this-25-anniversary-mc-hammer?utm_source=twitter

If anything, he can be remembered for his daring theft of "Super Freak", possibly the beginning of the end for sampling and underground/non-mainstream rap music. Both a premonition and a pariah in many uncomfortable ways. Not sure I can put my finger precisely on what but there is something remarkably insincere about MC Hammer.

[Edited 1/16/15 9:02am]

TheGoldStandard said:

If anything, he can be remembered for his daring theft of "Super Freak", possibly the beginning of the end for sampling and underground/non-mainstream rap music. Both a premonition and a pariah in many uncomfortable ways. Not sure I can put my finger precisely on what but there is something remarkably insincere about MC Hammer.

this all time hijacking of a song that was created just 9 years earlier is a major reason, if the main reason why sampling grew way outta hand

then sampled Prince's When Doves Cry for his song PRAY

the Jackson Five's Dancing Machine

and the Chi-Lites Have You Seen Her....

While Rick James, Prince, Jackson 5, Chi-Lites were all soul acts, he lifted their respective huge pop hits for his breakthrough singles, and that was never standard in hip hop. In fact, this is the main difference between his own 1988 album and 1990's diamond-selling Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. Hammer also had a very good rapport with the producers of MTV and hosts of Yo! MTV Raps, which he provided exciting videos for. I know it was very magnetic when I was 9. I saw M.C. Hammer on the tour for that album.

Cinny said:

While Rick James, Prince, Jackson 5, Chi-Lites were all soul acts, he lifted their respective huge pop hits for his breakthrough singles, and that was never standard in hip hop. In fact, this is the main difference between his own 1988 album and 1990's diamond-selling Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. Hammer also had a very good rapport with the producers of MTV and hosts of Yo! MTV Raps, which he provided exciting videos for. I know it was very magnetic when I was 9. I saw M.C. Hammer on the tour for that album.

.

Cinny in your O did Hammer start that standard? I'm thinking OPP, Salt N Pepa Tramp, even Ice Ice Baby etc. all were really just raps over loop/sample from hit songs around that era.

Cinny said:

While Rick James, Prince, Jackson 5, Chi-Lites were all soul acts, he lifted their respective huge pop hits for his breakthrough singles, and that was never standard in hip hop. In fact, this is the main difference between his own 1988 album and 1990's diamond-selling Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. Hammer also had a very good rapport with the producers of MTV and hosts of Yo! MTV Raps, which he provided exciting videos for. I know it was very magnetic when I was 9. I saw M.C. Hammer on the tour for that album.

Rick James sure didn't feel that way because he sued Hammer for coyright infringement

he didn't have to sample the work of those four acts to raise those songs prominence......they were already classics

he sampled them to use their music to enhance his own musical presentation....

There's no way PRAY was better than WHEN DOVES CRY

TheGoldStandard said:

Cinny said:

While Rick James, Prince, Jackson 5, Chi-Lites were all soul acts, he lifted their respective huge pop hits for his breakthrough singles, and that was never standard in hip hop. In fact, this is the main difference between his own 1988 album and 1990's diamond-selling Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. Hammer also had a very good rapport with the producers of MTV and hosts of Yo! MTV Raps, which he provided exciting videos for. I know it was very magnetic when I was 9. I saw M.C. Hammer on the tour for that album.

.

Cinny in your O did Hammer start that standard? I'm thinking OPP, Salt N Pepa Tramp, even Ice Ice Baby etc. all were really just raps over loop/sample from hit songs around that era.

U Can't Touch This came out late '89 I think, and the album dropped early '90, so it kinda preceded all of that. Of course, there were mega rap hits before that used white rock hits to get over (Fat Boys covering "Wipeout", "Louie Louie", and "The Twist" or Salt N Pepa covering "Twist And Shout") but M.C. Hammer went out and here he was in 1990 with hits based on mostly '80s pop-soul hooks. He never caught as much flack as Vanilla Ice, but they are pretty much one in the same formula-wise.

scorp84 said:

Couldn't care less about the "sampling" argument. At the end of the day, he was collaborating with a member of Con Funk Shun on almost all of his tracks anyways lol MC Hammer out on a show and as far as entertainment value, stood head and shoulders above the rest of his rap contemporaries. [Edited 1/16/15 13:38pm]

I care about that sampling.........1990 occured during a time where there existed an entire body of classing songs, or songs from years past to sample, now that just about everything has been sampled out, and when it gets to that point, the samples or being sampled

when the well runs dry, when it's all she wrote, what do we have then..........nothing left

because the artists who have relied on sampling wind up w/no music of their own

that's pretty much what happened to Hammer in the grand scheme artistically

Using other songs has been there since the beginning of hip hop. Sampling isn't much different than having a band replay funk & disco songs like Sugarhill Records. Turntable scratching used breaks from records. Sampling just cut out the middleman. Many rap songs used James Brown records years before U Can't Touch This. If you watch Stevie Wonder on the Cosby Show, he was sampling the Huxtables voices, and that was in 1986. It has been said that Stevie helped to popularize samplers as that was the first time some future users became aware of it and the Cosby Show was really big at the time. Robert Plant sampled his own group Led Zeppelin in his solo song Tall Cool One. Sampling did sort of get rid of the DJ in the average rap act, when they were often the focus like Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Jam Master Jay, Hurricane, Rock Master Scott, etc. Sampling isn't really that different than what some acts did long before there was hip hop. There's been many copycat and soundalike tunes since the recording industry began. Whenever something became popular, the labels would sign similar acts, whether it was Bing Crosby style crooners, doo wop acts, girl groups, rockabilly acts, Beatle clones, disco, hair metal, etc.

MickyDolenz said:

Using other songs has been there since the beginning of hip hop. Sampling isn't much different than having a band replay funk & disco songs like Sugarhill Records. Turntable scratching used breaks from records. Sampling just cut out the middleman. Many rap songs used James Brown records years before U Can't Touch This. If you watch Stevie Wonder on the Cosby Show, he was sampling the Huxtables voices, and that was in 1986. It has been said that Stevie helped to popularize samplers as that was the first time some future users became aware of it and the Cosby Show was really big at the time. Robert Plant sampled his own group Led Zeppelin in his solo song Tall Cool One. Sampling did sort of get rid of the DJ in the average rap act, when they were often the focus like Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Jam Master Jay, Hurricane, Rock Master Scott, etc. Sampling isn't really that different than what some acts did long before there was hip hop. There's been many copycat and soundalike tunes since the recording industry began. Whenever something became popular, the labels would sign similar acts, whether it was Bing Crosby style crooners, doo wop acts, girl groups, rockabilly acts, Beatle clones, disco, hair metal, etc.

I'm very aware of this.....

you could see where it was all going to lead, the proliferation of sampling went extreme by 1990

I'm not just refering to rap acts by 1990, artists from all genres were either sampling or interpolating......

it's to the point now where there is practically nothing else to sample

MickyDolenz said:

Using other songs has been there since the beginning of hip hop. Sampling isn't much different than having a band replay funk & disco songs like Sugarhill Records. Turntable scratching used breaks from records. Sampling just cut out the middleman. Many rap songs used James Brown records years before U Can't Touch This. If you watch Stevie Wonder on the Cosby Show, he was sampling the Huxtables voices, and that was in 1986. It has been said that Stevie helped to popularize samplers as that was the first time some future users became aware of it and the Cosby Show was really big at the time. Robert Plant sampled his own group Led Zeppelin in his solo song Tall Cool One. Sampling did sort of get rid of the DJ in the average rap act, when they were often the focus like Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Jam Master Jay, Hurricane, Rock Master Scott, etc. Sampling isn't really that different than what some acts did long before there was hip hop. There's been many copycat and soundalike tunes since the recording industry began. Whenever something became popular, the labels would sign similar acts, whether it was Bing Crosby style crooners, doo wop acts, girl groups, rockabilly acts, Beatle clones, disco, hair metal, etc.

There was sampling before M.C. Hammer, but it was much bolder to lift Rick James signature 1981 pop hit with the push hip hop was already getting by the end of the 1980s, and I think that was a formula that the rest of M.C. Hammer's Don't Hurt Em singles followed through with, and by influence, future rap songs that needed a formula, but not in an overt Fat Boys Meets The Beach Boys kind of way. There was a shift and a distinction I'm making.

Scorp said:

it's to the point now where there is practically nothing else to sample

There's been thousands of records released each year all over the world for decades from big budget mainstream performers to obscure cultural acts (.ie Native American, field records of tribesmen, people in prison, folk). I doubt the majority of them have been sampled. Most records don't sell much in the first place. Many old records have never even made it to CD and others have been lost due to tape deterioration, being misplaced, fires, floods, robbery, etc.

TheGoldStandard said:

Cinny said:

While Rick James, Prince, Jackson 5, Chi-Lites were all soul acts, he lifted their respective huge pop hits for his breakthrough singles, and that was never standard in hip hop. In fact, this is the main difference between his own 1988 album and 1990's diamond-selling Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. Hammer also had a very good rapport with the producers of MTV and hosts of Yo! MTV Raps, which he provided exciting videos for. I know it was very magnetic when I was 9. I saw M.C. Hammer on the tour for that album.

I'll say this much, the Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em album made one hell of an impact on modern pop culture.

But in my music rotation, I prefer the albums, Let's Get It Started & The Funky Headhunter.

scorp84 said:

TheGoldStandard said:

2Pac looks great. Is that from Hammer's "gansta" phase? 2 of Americas Most Wanted (oh and Hammer too)

It wasn't a "phase". It was strictly cosmetic. If people actually listened to that "Funky Headhunter" album, they would hear the same old Hammer, but with a modernized image and sound. He never claimed to be "gangsta" lol

He never claimed to be gangsta but he did try to change his image by

changing the way he dressed and marketed his sound. He was catching

flack from some of his peers in the industry so he aligned himself with

the Dogg Pound to give off this tough guy image. So although he didn't claim gangsta he was trying to give off the persona that he wasn't the soft pop star Hammer anymore.

As far as the sampling argument goes, yes it's been around since the inception of the genre see Rapper's Delight(Duh). but at the

same time I'm not sure if there is anyone outside of Hammer and Diddy

that made off like bandits by watering down the genre by outright raping

classic songs where they basically rehash the whole record and the music overshadows the rhymes which is one reason why Hammer didn't get respect from some of his peers and rap fans. Most of their contemporaries like Tribe, DeLa, Run DMC, LLCoolJ, etc cleverly sampled records without basically rehashing the whole song and their rhymes were the focal point of their music.

[Edited 1/18/15 21:31pm]

phunkdaddy said:

scorp84 said:

TheGoldStandard said: It wasn't a "phase". It was strictly cosmetic. If people actually listened to that "Funky Headhunter" album, they would hear the same old Hammer, but with a modernized image and sound. He never claimed to be "gangsta" lol

He never claimed to be gangsta but he did try to change his image by

changing the way he dressed and marketed his sound. He was catching

flack from some of his peers in the industry so he aligned himself with

the Dogg Pound to give off this tough guy image. So although he didn't claim gangsta he was trying to give off the persona that he wasn't the soft pop star Hammer anymore.

As far as the sampling argument goes, yes it's been around since the inception of the genre see Rapper's Delight(Duh). but at the

same time I'm not sure if there is anyone outside of Hammer and Diddy

that made off like bandits by watering down the genre by outright raping

classic songs where they basically rehash the whole record and the music overshadows the rhymes which is one reason why Hammer didn't get respect from some of his peers and rap fans. Most of their contemporaries like Tribe, DeLa, Run DMC, LLCoolJ, etc cleverly sampled records without basically rehashing the whole song and their rhymes were the focal point of their music.

[Edited 1/18/15 21:31pm]

exaaaaaaaaactly

during Hip-Hop's inception, your Kool-Herc's and Grandmaster Flash's would utilize funk records strong in melody such as James Brown's, took the long instrumental sections to create the "break beat".....totally different from what sampling became by the time the 90s hit

Public Enemy utilized James Brown riffs, but created their own beats...

after U CAN'T TOUCH THIS/PLEASE HAMMER DON'T HURT EM his sales over 10 million, the sampling grew exponientally and the sample was a tool to sell records featuring the music of yesterday moreso than the lyrics

after 2 LEGIT TO QUIT, I knew Hammer was going to go the "gangsta" route for he exhausted the positive rapper image......and truth be told, his real personality was probably more like what we saw in Funky Headhunter than the image he projected during Please Hammer Don't Hurt Em

I always thought his album was his first album LET'S GET IT STARTED

Cinny said:

Rick James says it all

he was miffed at Hammer for jacking his song.....

phunkdaddy said:

As far as the sampling argument goes, yes it's been around since the inception of the genre see Rapper's Delight(Duh). but at the

same time I'm not sure if there is anyone outside of Hammer and Diddy

that made off like bandits by watering down the genre by outright raping

classic songs where they basically rehash the whole record and the music overshadows the rhymes which is one reason why Hammer didn't get respect from some of his peers and rap fans. Most of their contemporaries like Tribe, DeLa, Run DMC, LLCoolJ, etc cleverly sampled records without basically rehashing the whole song and their rhymes were the focal point of their music.

That is the distinction

This will always be Hammer's breakthrough song as far as I'm concerned, the one that really put him on the map, and it's his best song IMO:

Oh yeah. That Rick James song.