So That's Why They Call Him 'Hammer'

The year was 1994. Gangsta rap had taken over the airwaves, most prevalently in the form of Dr. Dre and the peaking Deathrow empire. MC Hammer, until then the most successful solo rap artist of all-time (U Can't Touch This was the In Da Club of its day), had become irrelevant. Not one to fold up his parachute pants and call it a day, MC Hammer underwent a Madonna-esque transformation, dropping the 'MC' and referring to himself as 'The Funky Headhunter'. Audiences first got a taste of the new Hammer with the song, 'It's All Good'. Fans, spectators and haters alike did a collective eyebrow-raise and asked, "What the f@#k is this $#!t?" At worst people thought it was a harmless misfire. Many forgot about it as soon as their fingers hit the remote. A few months later, 'Pumps and a Bump' dropped and there would be no ignoring it (in many senses of the word 'it'). The video was filmed at Hammer's home, his own personal Xanadu, replete with a bevy of bikini-clad women (in pumps, natch) and a waterfall--a remote controlled waterfall. This was before the advent of thong bikinis, because watching the video it almost seems tasteful considering how much skin isn't shown--at least with regards to the ladies. And that's where the problem lies: Hammer is the most overtly sexual thing in the video.



One poor wardrobe decision destroyed one of the greatest hip-hop careers ever. A pair of zebra-striped Speedos...man, dog, man dog! What was he thinking? We may never know. He tactfully avoided the question in many subsequent interviews. Although he did make a second version of the video abandoning the pool-party motif (with Deion Sanders making an oddly flat cameo) and Hammer himself fully clad in a khaki suit. It wasn't his fault that he was a 'show-er' as opposed to a 'grower'.

But that wasn't the log that broke the camels back. In the original video, Hammer does these full-body gyrations that are just...disturbing. I'm sure he thought in his head, "Man this is so dope! I've been working out for months. The ladies are so gonna dig this." But of course that never happened. Instead the cognitive dissonance between the images of old "party up/family fun time"-Hammer and new mutant sex-deviant Hammer proved too much for his audience to bear. What made it worse was that Hammer is the only male in the video in Speedos, thus making him all the more conspicuous. He's also got on his ubiquitous shades plus a pair of black gloves and black boots--making him some bizarre gangsta gigolo hybrid. Pay attention, Timberlake! This was the original FutureSex/Love Sounds! The world just wasn't ready.


"I always sit down to enjoy an arous-, I mean rousing round of dominoes with my homeboys in my Speedos. It doesn't bother you guys, right? I mean we're all friends here, right?"
"Uh, sure...(as long as the checks keep clearing...)"

Too often we fear and hate what we don't understand.