Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em

by

MC Hammer

Edit

MC Hammer (and later, just Hammer) was one of those musical performers who can be likened to a shooting star. He burned brightly for a brief moment and then flamed out. Unlike other performers who had this fate befall them, Hammer's disappearance was not because of drug problems or any violent criminal issues. He simply stopped making good music. Yet, for the brief period he was on top, he was among the brightest of the stars in the musical sky.

"Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em" was his second album, but the first to truly make an impact on the music charts. "Can't Touch This", a rap-dance track that borrowed liberally from funkmeister Rick James' hit "Super Freak", ignited the frenzy of fans clamoring to hear his music on the radio and in clubs. He continued to churn out hits with his remake of the Chi-Lites "Have You Seen Her" and with his 'signature' tune "Here Comes the Hammer" (The 'signature' tune being a device employed by many rappers in the late 80's and early 90's to announce their arrival on the hip-hop scene with in the form of a music track on their debut album. See Snoop Dogg's "Who Am I? (What's My Name?)" for a good example).

The best track off "Please Hammer..." is "Pray". It's an inspiring track based in Hammer's gospel tendencies and borrowing its beat from Prince's "When Dove Cry". It's a fun track to listen to and the accompanying video is Hammer at his best. It was the second major hit off this album and helped push Hammer into the stratosphere of musical stardom. His stay there may have been brief, but oh what a ride it was!

So after I lost all of my CDs in a burglary, one of my friends helpfully thought to get my new music collection started with...MC Hammer! Popping it into the CD player reminded me why MC Hammer was super-cool for about a year and a half.

It's an uneven album. There are some great, if dated, songs on this album. "U Can't Touch This" really was good, and "Pray" has worn surprisingly well. On the other hand, some of the other songs, like "Crime Story" and "Have You Seen Her" are just plodding. And the album ends really weakly, with hardly any rapping on "Let's Go Deeper" and "Work This."

If you buy CDs for just one or two songs, there's some nostalgia value here, and you'll have the only car on the block with MC Hammer blasting out your windows. On the other hand, it's really not an album to listen to in its entirety, even if you're on a nostalgia trip.