Guilty Pleasure Music
MC Hammer
Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em
1990 Capitol Records
Guilty pleasure music?
Do you even believe in this label, or is music too subjective, too emotional, too nostalgic?
Have you ever bought a record you feel like you have to justify when you get to the counter?
Any songs/ artists in your catalog that make you pause before playing in public?
...Have I already overthought this whole thing and maybe music should just be fun sometimes?!?!
MC Hammer was one of the first artists I picked out on my own as a kid. Pure entertainer, fun, cool, and an awesome name! Seemed like he was all over the TV. And just got me and my friends hype trying to mimic his dancing and rapping.
"Music hits me so hard makes me say 'oh my Lord” … we envisioned ourselves as peak cool; as best some elementary age kids in the mid-west could. He, on the hand, was actually setting an entire scene. A self-made: Rapper, Writer, producer, choreographer, going from selling homemade tapes from the trunk of his car to Winner of: 3-Grammys, 8-American Music Awards, a People's Choice Award, an NAACP Image Awards and the Billboard Diamond Award (the first for a hip-hop artist selling over 10mill copies). This album stayed at the top of the charts for 21 weeks. And sold over 18-million copies to date.
Stop! it's #HammerTime! Crate digging as an adult I find this on the shelf!?!? I Do Not hesitate to snatch it up.
Now I Confess I can definitely be a music snob and maybe to my own detriment there are some things you won't catch me listening to. I’ve learned we don't have to like everything, But I'm owning this one. And hey at the end of the day they're your ears. If you're into it; I say drop the needle and turn it up!
Let’s talk about the songs. The elephant in the room is ‘U can’t touch this’. Maybe one of the pillars of rap-pop crossover. You can’t even hear Rick James ‘Super Freak’ and not reference this sample of his song. Enough said. It really might have been the switch in gears for me tho. Going from mega dance hits to almost ballad style ‘Have you seen her’ and ‘Help the Children’. Is it possible these were almost a precursor to that New Jack Swing sound that was about to move in? Maybe the hints of sexuality on ‘She’s soft and Wet’. Oh, how my young mind tried to understand what that might mean. I knew enough not to repeat the lyrics in front of certain people. Speaking of, the seller for my conservative parents was ‘Pray’. If I rapped along those lyrics with my Walkman, it was passable to keep in the house.
However, your feelings on this one shake out now; Like it or not #MCHammer is on #ParkersPlaylist
