U Can't Touch Him M.C. Hammer flies high by making rap a pop sensation

By JAY COCKS

This man has the stats. He has the moves, the wardrobe and the attitude too, but he has those numbers cold. Hear him: "Currently we're on a 60-city tour, selling out everywhere, including Salt Lake City in Mormon country. Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em is one of the few albums since Thriller to hold the No. 1 in Billboard -- No. 1 pop, No. 1 black album at the same time. It's the biggest selling album of this year, bar any -- rock 'n' roll, pop, blues, toe tappin', whatever it is. We went out and sold 5 million albums in four months. Twelve weeks at No. 1 on the R.-and-B. charts, nine weeks at No. 1 on the pop side -- ahead of New Kids on the Block and Madonna."

Lay that kind of talk on top of a heavy riff and it could be another slick M.C. Hammer rap, the kind of bouncy, braggadocian tune that repeatedly hooked the top single spot for U Can't Touch This. Hammer, 27, is living a dream: superstardom in a flash; private jet between gigs; movie offers; and a record label, Bust It Management Productions, to call his own. And all this by being the first performer to forge an alliance between two warring camps: the poppers and the rappers.

Hammer's technique for achieving this musical rapprochement is typically savvy. Critics have savaged rap for everything from violence to racism to sexism, but all these elements have been blended out of Hammer's material. That softening seems, in part, to be quite natural. Hammer became a born-again Christian in 1982, and he's simple and sincere when he says, "I attribute all my success to a blessing from God." But the softening is also calculated. U Can't Touch This takes a strong riff from Rick James' 1981 Super Freak (co- writing credit acknowledged and royalties paid) and works all kinds of electronic mixing wizardry on it. That "sampling," as the business calls it, produces an up-to-date, eminently danceable sound.

Hard-core rappers who fall for the Hammer are hard to find. Public Enemy's Chuck D is strongly in his corner, but Hammer has been called out by the rap press ("cheesy, pop-oriented production") and torched by fellow rappers from Digital Underground to M.C. Serch and 3rd Bass, who kept the heat high in the pointedly titled Gas Face. Hammer handles such criticism with equanimity. "Rather than cross over ((into the pop market)), let's say that I expanded," he suggests. "My music caught on because the people are ready for it."

He might have added that they are ready to watch him move to it, and to move right along with him. His live show features 32 performers onstage at one time, but the indisputable center of attention remains Hammer. He has dumped the more or less standard rap choreography (strut, turn, grab crotch, strut) in favor of a stops-out, Paula Abdul kind of abandon. This boy can move, which is pretty much what he's been doing since the age of 11, when he started traveling with his hometown baseball team, the Oakland A's, as a bat boy and all-around gofer.

Born Stanley Kirk Burrell, he picked up his stage moniker from A's players who noticed his resemblance to home-run king Hammerin' Hank Aaron (the M.C., added later, stands for Master of Ceremonies, rapspeak for band leader). After a two-year hitch in the Navy, Hammer borrowed some start-up cash from a couple of A's outfielders to launch Bustin' Records. He couldn't play an instrument, and he sang with more enthusiasm than finesse, but his first album, 1988's Let's Get It Started, produced three Top 10 singles. And those hits have just kept on coming. The proof, he'd say, is in the numbers. If Hammer's music is Rap Lite, it's still a heady brew.

With reporting by Roseanne Spector/Washington