This all comes from the song that Jay-Z and Kanye West released recently called Appalled, a track that also features Pusha T and Wu-Tang Clan‘s RZA.
In the track Jay-Z, raps: “Hammer went broke so you know I’m all focused / I lost 30 mill so I spent another 30 / ‘Cause unlike Hammer / 30 million can’t hurt me”
These hit a nerve with 48-year-old U Cant Touch This rapper, who took to Twitter to write a series of insults back at Jay-Z.
Hammer said he would answer hellboy's slight with a new song on 31 October, Devil's Night.
"You wanted my attention #HellBoy (Jigga), you got it," MC Hammer wrote
Six things I love about MC Hammer ...
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As impossible as it is to imagine considering my recent body of work, I was once a hard news reporter. I spent eight years covering courtrooms, including five years in Los Angeles -- mostly writing stories about celebrity-related lawsuits, arrests and other proceedings.
media.defsounds.com
Stop. Hammer time.
After watching hundreds of famous people dealing with their legal problems -- often displaying greed, narcissism and/or stupidity along the way -- there were only three who I ended up liking more after their time in the courts was done: Tom Waits, Snoop Dogg and MC Hammer.
It was the mid-1990s, and Hammer was dealing with his financial troubles. He had a bankruptcy proceeding, and I covered an additional lawsuit against some of his former attorneys. Short of an accused murderer, I've never seen someone going through the court system face more ridicule from the media and the public. And yet, after digging deeper into the files, it was clear Hammer's problem was -- if anything -- excessive benevolence. The guy had half of Oakland on his payroll, and gave people close to him too much access to the money. He was, in money management terms, Too Legit to Quit.
So when I saw that MC Hammer was on the bill for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this weekend -- he's on the Star Stage at 11:30 a.m. -- I said the same thing I do every time I see the rapper having success on a TV show, with his online endeavors and now with his MMA clothing company. "Good for him." And when I see someone like Jay-Z making jokes at Hammer's expense (see below), I get kind of pissed.
Whatever else he is -- a poor financial planner, a little egotistical, a performer of musically questionable movie soundtrack songs -- I think Hammer has proven himself to be a good guy who works hard and tries to do right by people. And from his days as an Oakland A's bat boy, he's been an asset to his community.
Below are six things I love about MC Hammer ...
6. He's freaking everywhere This guy grinds harder than anyone. Being on the stage at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass only seems odd if you ignore Hammer's body of work over the past 10 years. I've seen Hammer with shows on at least three different TV channels -- including preaching on the Trinity Broadcast Network. He has concerts all the time, seems to have hooked up with every other social networking company and posts something on Twitter approximately every 37 seconds. I drove by what appeared to be an old bingo parlor in Berkeley a couple of years ago and saw "Coming Friday: MC Hammer!" painted on the window. Of course he is. Hammer is everywhere.
5. He lives in Tracy Unless he's moved in the last year or so, Hammer lives in rural Tracy, Calif., with his wife of 25 years and kids -- just like every other sleepy-looking commuter who sits next to me on the Dublin/Pleasanton BART line. You can criticize the guy for losing all of his money the first time, but he's clearly taking the right steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.
4. He's the happiest guy on Twitter A few months ago I surveyed Hammer's Twitter feed and found that the rapper averaged 2.9 exclamation points per Tweet over 20 posts, compared to Lindsay Lohan with 2.2. Excessive punctuation? I just say he's a really positive guy. And until the Jay-Z thing, he never had a mean thing to say about anybody.
3. He put Chris Mullin in one of his videos I'm pretty sure the "Too Legit To Quit" video was the model for Christopher Nolan's "Inception." It's just as mind-bending, and I'm guessing it cost about the same. Mullin appears at the 4:05 mark, spinning a basketball. Which leads us to ...
Too legit ...
2. He always represented Oakland One of my favorite 21st Century Hammer moments came a couple of years ago, when I bought the hyphy album "World Premiere" by the Oakland group The Team. These are guys in their 20s who came up the hard way -- I bought their first album in a Walgreens parking lot on High Street in Oakland -- and they reserved the last guest spot on the "It's Getting Hot" remix for Hammer. The lyrics speak for themselves: "You've got to respect/I opened the doors/And brought over half the town on my tour."
In everything from the lyrics to "Too Legit to Quit" ("I'll hit with a dose of Oaktown power/ and charge you by the hour/I'm shakin like a quake/and funks get devoured") to the name of his original production company (Oaktown Records), Hammer never turned his back on Oakland.
1. He stood up to Jay-Z Stipulating that Jay-Z is one of the greatest musical artists of his generation, his recent insult against MC Hammer in a free Kanye West track was really stupid. Making a joke in 2010 about MC Hammer losing his money is like making fun of Dan Quayle because he can't spell, or writing a dis rap against Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. You're about 20 years late, it was too easy of a target to begin with and Hammer has worked hard to overcome the problems Jay-Z is attacking him about. It's the rap equivalent of kicking a puppy. It makes me think that Jay-Z either didn't think this one out, or he's a bully.
Hammer has been responding on Twitter (!!!!), and will answer Jay-Z in his own rap at the end of the month. Oaktown has your back, Hammer. God knows you always had ours ...
PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of this parenting blog, which admittedly sometimes has nothing to do with parenting. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?entry_id=73290#ixzz10vRCfcOr
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