Interview: MC Hammer talks going prime time

Hip hop star rebounds from bankruptcy

From BET.com | By Starr Rhett

The best thing about the catch phrase “too legit to quit” is that the man who created it is living proof. MC Hammer burst onto the music scene in 1988 with his major label debut, “Let’s Get It Started,” but it wasn’t until his 1990 follow up “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em” when people started to get the message that he was not just a fad with his flamboyant wardrobe and memorable hooks.

Not only is his sophomore LP the best-selling rap album of all time, but several endorsement deals, a Saturday morning cartoon and an extraordinary amount of mainstream success allowed Hammer to break barriers for hip hop, demonstrating its market potential in pop culture.

Hammer’s reign seemingly came to an end when he filed for bankruptcy in 1996, but he reconfigured his master plan and is back in business. Extremely tech savvy and with four businesses of his own, including dancejam.com and a dance studio, he lectures at the top colleges and universities in the United States, tours the world with his dynamic stage show and still finds time to return to his normal life as Stanley Burrell.

Now starring in A&E’s new reality series, “Hammertime,” the world watches as he balances several different roles as entertainer, entrepreneur and father, raising six children with his wife of 24 years and maintaining a productive home. We caught up with the family man to get the secrets to his success.

How did you ink a deal with A&E for a family show?

MC Hammer: About a year and a half ago, they contacted me and asked if I was interested. I told them I might be if the terms and conditions meet a certain criteria, so that was the genesis of the relationship.

Terms and conditions? You mean like not being followed with cameras 24/7?

MC Hammer: [Laughs] No. We definitely weren’t filmed 24/7. We did it for about three months but not all day.

You’re pretty tech savvy, so were you hands on with the editing of the show?

MC Hammer: I didn’t do too much of the editing. Anything that I did, I did over the phone [but] I was confident. I saw some initial roughs of what we were doing in post [production] and it was true to what was happening in the house so I just let them go.

You have five kids plus your nephew and they’re all different ages from toddler to young adult. How do you manage dealing with children of such a motley age range?

MC Hammer: They all grew up together in the same house. Years change for everybody so with the 21-year-old, the closest sibling that she had was her little cousin – my nephew – who’s 18, so they’re not that far apart. Then, my other daughter will be 16 next month – so I have 18, 16, 14 and 11 – they’re just a couple years behind each other, for the most part. The big jump is for the 3-year-old. He has the largest gap of anybody, but it’s pretty manageable just having them two or three years apart. It’s kind of like each person wants to hang out with the one that’s a little bit older.

Your family is so progressive and your children stay out of trouble and out of the tabloids, so what’s the secret to your family’s success?

MC Hammer: I think the real secret is that I always left MC Hammer outside and brought Stanley Burrell inside.

It’s great to see a positive Black family on TV. Your show, like "The Cosby Show" – even though that was fiction – shows that successful Black families actually exist. Even beyond race, any family could learn a lot from watching you.

MC Hammer: Thank you. I say the other part though. I say we’re a combination from "Good Times." I got some of James in me [laughs] but I hope that this show – keep in mind that I live 20 minutes from Stockton, Calif., the number one foreclosure market in America and where unemployment is over 10% – what I’m hoping is that through this show, since the whole world is aware that MC Hammer went through bankruptcy, that people going through hardships can see that through it all, you can still have a positive family and you can still cling to God and to hope, and still come out on the other side.

Hammertime airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. on A&E.

Read the rest of the interview on BET.com.