“That’s word, because you know: A lyrical & critical investigation into MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”” in “That’s word, because you know: A lyrical & critical investigation into MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This””
That’s word, because you know:
A lyrical & critical investigation into MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”
Pune Dracker
If you’ve never done The Typewriter, let’s try it now.
Stand up, legs slightly wider than hip distance apart.
Option to remain seated, or to isolate the movement from the waist down or the waist up.
Bend your knees slightly and keep your hands on your thighs, fingers spread.
Pick your right foot up. Put it down.Pick your left foot up. Put it down.
Repeat this sequence and increase the speed and angle at which the knee bends until you are running in place.
If you are seated, tap the feet -- left, right, left, right -- as if you are running.
Continue to run in place as you roll both shoulders up, back and front. Repeat.
You can also roll your shoulders up and front and back, if that feels better. Repeat.
Congratulations, you’ve just experienced Hammertime.
Welcome to the ‘90s.
If you’ve never seen the official video for “U Can’t Touch This,” go watch it. Contained therein represents all the genius of MC Hammer -- the American rapper and global sensation Stanley Kirk Burrell who became synonymous with those moves, those pants, that positivity. Premiered on The Arsenio Hall Show in late 1989 and officially released on January 13, 1990, the song won two Grammys -- the first-ever rap song to be nominated -- and two MTV Video Awards. With Hammer sharing songwriting credits with Alonzo Miller and Rick James, whose “Superfreak” intro is sampled throughout, “U Can’t Touch This” went on to earn him an estimated $70 million by the mid-1990s.
“It carved its own groove,” Hammer said of the song’s legendary status, even surprising to him, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.
At the time there was also a growing sentiment in some sectors that Hammer was a plagiarist (yes, even though he credited James) and a sell-out, his persona and music not worthy of serious consideration. “Hammer got a bad rap because he went so commercial,” explains hip-hop scholar and CUNY Associate Professor Dr. Todd Craig, when I ask during our seminar on the birth and rise to prominence of hip-hop culture in New York.
Even though Oakland-born and -bred Hammer was beyond our purview, to me he does represent the good-natured, anti-violent spirit of early hip-hop, with no profanity in his lyrics, and a dancing machine to boot. “People mistook his showmanship for a lack of authenticity, but he is quietly triple OG,” says Craig.
Harem pants. Pajama pants. Jupes-culottes. There are countless versions of baggy pants with a sagging rise, typically tapered at the ankle. Yet perhaps their fullest expression, their highest potential, the essence of their Form, reveals itself through Hammer pants.
“When he put them on, it was over,” says Tamechi Toney Briggs, the vision behind Hammer’s iconic trousers. Tamechi, who was known for designing costumes for his fellow Soul Train dancers, recalls Hammer’s brother/manager coming to visit him in 1989. “They said, ‘Listen, this album is about to be released and we need an image -- what can you do for Hammer?’”
Tamechi knew exactly what to do. While he had dressed many of the Soul Train dancers in similar styles, Hammer’s were all that, plus. “I made ‘em way, way baggier, and the crotch was way lower than it was supposed to be,” he said.
Duly noted by Hammer, who at first found them too big and baggy. “I refused to change my style,” says Tamechi.
Even Hammer’s detractors -- hardcore hip-hop and gangsta rap fans who preferred theirs undiluted with mainstream pop -- wore pants that looked more than just a little like his. “They also rocked Hammer pants on the East Coast,” reports Craig, adding that, back then, silky rayon suits with notched lapels were “the thing to do.”
***
The Google search page for “U Can’t Touch This” lists its genre as Children’s Music. I am and I’m not surprised, considering’s the song’s record of being misinterpreted, misunderstood and -- not to dis children -- its text, intent and impact infantilized.
But suppose that, like anything new, “U Can’t Touch This” had to teach its audience how to listen to it -- and those with younger ears simply had an easier time grokking it, carrying as they do less auricular baggage than adults. Say mainstream public wasn’t used to the concept of sampling, so the listener had to undo their expectations with each and every loop of the opening riff of “Super Freak,” that funked-up continuum bucking across the song’s universe, refusing to put out. Say this new experience was confusing to a listener who had never heard anything like it. Say this resulted in cognitive dissonance, which some people might have sought to avoid, or explain away as “children’s music.”
Admittedly, this theory presupposes that ‘90s listeners knew and immediately recognized James’ now-iconic funk song that is sampled in Hammer’s song. But “Super Freak” “only” reached #16 on Billboard’s Top 100 in 1981 -- and by the time “U Can’t Touch This” came out, many young fans might not have ever heard it.
Still, with his oversized gold lamé pants and Energizer Bunny-level performances, it’s not surprising that people, even those who liked his music, might talk about him in terms you’d use to describe the movements and costume of a cartoon character. Indeed, he was a cartoon, starring in and hosting Hammerman, which ran on Saturday mornings in the fall of 1991. And he did once tweet, “I am partial to the Energizer Bunny because he keeps goin and goin’.”
He also tweeted, “It's not Science vs Philosophy ... It's Science + Philosophy. Elevate your Thinking and Consciousness. When you measure, include the measurer.”
The study of the dressed body is relatively new in fashion analysis, and the study of the body dressed in Hammer Pants while executing the Running Man is likely also relatively new. Fashion theorist Dr. Llewellyn Negrin describes the designs of Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo as illustrative of a “fluid and organic relationship between the fabric and the body, in which the garment is constantly changing its form in response to the movements of the body.” Applying this framework to the relationship between the body of Stanley Kirk Burrell and the garments in which he executed the Hammer dance, we begin to see his fresh new kicks… and pants as discarnate spirits. Discarnate choreographers. “You can dance in 'em,” Hammer told ABC News in 2009, “and there’s a slight delay. You move, and then the pants move, so it brings a nice little flair."I love you, Hammer, but you might have it backwards --
What if the pants move, and then you move?
I change the playback speed on the official video to .25 and there, there at 1:02, when he crosses his left leg over the right and spins to the right… See the material begin to balloon to the side before Hammer spins, as if the Hammer Pants are looking in the direction they’re going? For a dancer, this is known as spotting, a technique in which the body and the head move at different rates to aid in control and balance, and to avoid dizziness. I’ll never know how many times I’ve danced to “U Can’t Touch This” in my 20+ years of taking, and teaching, jazz funk classes, but I can tell you it’s not easy keeping up with the beat while executing the moves cleanly and completely, let along keep up with your pants.
You keep looking forward until you can’t look forward anymore, because the rest of the body has moved on.
In this case, while Hammer rotates smoothly at a constant speed, the Hammer Pants periodically rotate much faster and then stop briefly, as if to negotiate with the centrifugal forces that allow Hammer to remain in balance. And we cannot forget about the impact of any additional pairs of Hammer pants or other garments appearing in the video. At 2:43, for example, you might suppose Hammer’s Hammer Pants eye the fringe on the leggings worn by one of his fly girls before completing the full rotation. It’s so fast, you’d never really know.
***
The Google search page for “U Can’t Touch This” features a tool that allows users to dispute information contained therein. To the bottom left of the About sidebar, I click the link to give Feedback on the genre, which links to a form that asks me whether the categories listed are Incorrect, Incomplete, Outdated, Controversial or Other.
I select Incomplete and submit additional details in the box (optional):
You may wish to add a third tag to reflect that “U Can’t Touch This” is also regularly referred to as hip-hop. I’m curious as to the choice of Children’s Music. The song was widely accepted by listeners of all ages and, as you reported, went on to win Grammy and MTV Awards in non-children’s categories. Children really do love this song, though, so you weren’t off base. There is an MC Hammer doll, who also came with a cassette tape of “U Can’t Touch This,” so maybe that was the version that genre tag is referring to.
According to Andy Warhol’s timeline, the genre of hip-hop was, in 1990, finally old enough to be new. “New art’s never new when it’s done,” he says in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. “You don’t know it’s new. You don’t know what it is. It doesn’t become new until about ten years later, because then it looks new.”
Yes, of course there were people who listened, ten years earlier, to, say, Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” the first rap record to hit the Top 40, and were able to plug in to this for-real truly innovative phenomenon that went on to change the music industry, and then the world. They may have had no idea what an MC was, or that one of the Sugarhill Gang had stolen lyrics from someone else, but finally, finally they understood, as they listened to three MCs rapping over the same bassline from Chic’s “Good Times” for almost 15 minutes, that they would not be hearing the verse or the chorus anytime soon.
Under Warholian theory, it didn’t matter. Andy’s theory is all-inclusive -- something has to be new to everyone, not just early adopters or the avant garde, for it to be considered new. It takes an entire decade for those at the back of the pack to catch up. “U Can’t Touch This” was right on time, sweeping up the laggards ten years later why you standing there? and making them do The Typewriter.
3 things the critics were saying
“U Can’t Touch This” is a marvelously multivocal piece of secular work that is based on and studded with elements of sacrality and religious meaning.
- Philip M. Royster, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of English and African American Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, and leader in the Church of God reformation movement
Philip M. Royster fairly outrageously claims that MC Hammer is a “potent shaman”…conveniently failing to mention that the song is widely considered an uninspired, unusually complete sampling of Rick James's "Super Freak”…with pedestrian lyrics.
- Neil Nehring, Ph.D., Professor of English at UT Austin, specializing in popular music and youth culture
They make it look like a time you would just want to be in or have experienced. – YouTube commenter on the official video for “U Can’t Touch This”
***
A preliminary close reading of Hammer’s lyrics for “U Can’t Touch This” reveals a complex text with multiple points of view that often switch from line to line. For example:
My, my, my, my
(U can’t touch this)Music hits me so hard
Makes me say, “Oh my Lord”
Thank you for blessing me
Hammer begins the song addressing “you” -- who could be either the listener or some other person or persons, but we don’t know yet. We also don’t know, until the line that follows, that when he says, “Oh my Lord,” he’s really talking to the Lord.
I told you, homeboy
You can’t touch this
A-ha! So the POV shifts again, and the listener has to do some mental work as Hammer cues the listener that the U in “U Can’t Touch This” may be, or is now, a homeboy. If the listener is a homeboy, that makes it even more personal. This does not preclude the possibility of U comprising all homeboys in particular, and also everybody else listening and not listening. The meaning intensifies should the listener identify with the narrator, which would be a perfectly natural thing to do, especially if one is enhancing their experience by adding to the performative aspect -- i.e., doing the Running Man while thinking of someone who can’t touch this.
Although this brief analysis concerns only the introduction and parts of a verse, the song continues to unfold with nuance and multiple layers, as long as you know who U are, for its full duration of 4 minutes and 17 seconds.
‘90s Dance Interlude #2
Ready to do the Typewriter again? That was Level I, that stationary version we learned earlier. If you’d like to explore further, begin to deepen the movement by moving the body to the side. Typewrite to the left, typewrite to the right, as you wish, traveling across the page.
***
If a song is a children’s song because a child likes it, then I know for a fact that “U Can’t Touch This” is children’s music. I was an assistant teacher for kids’ jazz dance classes at the 92nd Street Y for 15 years starting in 2000, and throughout that time there wasn’t a class that didn’t dance to it at some point. They loved the song even though they’d never seen the video or, for that matter, knew what Hammer pants were, many of them requesting to perform to it in their end-of-year recital.
We didn’t teach them Hammer’s moves, but steps that were inspired by street dance styles of the time -- we gave them our own names, like “Get Outta Here! and “Rubberband -- in addition to pirouettes and chaine turns.
“I know you’re all ladies,” the teacher, Sal, instructed the students, most of whom were from wealthy Upper East Side and Upper West Side families. “But if you’ve had a hard day at school, this is the time to let it all out. Go crazy. Mess up your hair.”
Now you may not think that UES 8-year-olds have hard days, but hold up. They were so overscheduled, with Hebrew and soccer and play rehearsal and singing and ballet, that an invitation to let go sounded off-limits, delicious. And they took that to heart. When I watched the Channel Thirteen television special about the 92Y’s Harkness Dance Center’s 75th anniversary for which some of them were interviewed, I had to smile. “If you have a hard day and then you come to dance class,” said Yael, “ you can just forget about everything and start dancing.”
And Daniella: “You get to be yourself when you do all of this.”
***
Less than forty-eight hours after I submitted the Google feedback form, I return to the page to double-check the song’s date of release. Oh my god. The genre for “U Can’t Touch This” is now listed as: Hip hop music, Pop rap, Children’s Music
There are many ways to listen to “U Can’t Touch This.”
Listen as a 7-year-old with a little red cassette tape player, punching the On/Off button after memorizing each phrase perfectly
Listen as Rick James who, upon hearing the song for the first time, remarked, “Hell, no, I wasn’t impressed with that s--t.”
Listen as Rick James who, after hearing he was listed as a songwriter and purchasing 21 racehorses and 2 helicopters with the royalties, remarked, “MC Hammer managed to do a record without demeaning any race or any sexuality. ‘U Can’t Touch This’ was the largest selling rap record of all time, and I’m really happy to be part of that.”
Listen as a white male scholar and music critic who missed the point and has never done, and is possibly incapable of doing, The Typewriter
Listen as San Jose State football coach and Hammer’s former backup dancer, Alonzo Carter, who regularly dances the “U Can’t Touch This” choreography to get his team motivated for practice
Listen as Hammer pants creator Tamechi Toney Briggs, who knew better when “MC Hammer was afraid to go Big and Baggie”
Listen as an 8-year-old on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, dancing the “Get Outta Here” after a hard day at school
Listen as Rupert Wainwright, Hammer’s videographer, who originally edited out the Hammertime sequence and told him, “Nobody wants to watch you dance for 15 seconds uninterrupted.”
Listen as Mattel’s 12-inch MC Hammer doll, the special edition gold lame version with the gold boombox that makes real sounds
Bibliography
- ABC News GMA. “Hammer Pants Hit the Runways.” ABCNews.com, June 5, 2009. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/BeautySecrets/story?id=7769216&
- The Arsenio Hall Show. TV series. 5 Seasons (original run), Fox , 1989-1994.
- Billboard.com. “Rick James.” Accessed June 2023. https://www.billboard.com/artist/rick-james/
- Bonagura, Kyle. “Meet the Coach who Gave MC Hammer His Best Dance Moves.” ESPN.com. May 11, 2017. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/19345745/san-jose-state-spartans-alonzo-carter-goes-touring-mc-hammer-coaching-college-football
- Burrell, Stanley, James Johnson, and Alonzo Miller. “U Can’t Touch This,” Track 2 on Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em. Capitol, 1990.
- Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: Picador,
- 2005.
- Chic. “Good Times,” Track 1 on Risqué. Atlantic, 1979.
- Craig, Todd. Email message to author, August 14, 2023.
- Craig, Todd. “’Jackin’ for Beats’”: DJing for Citation Critique.” Radical Teacher 97: 20-29, October 2013. https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2013.40.
- Entwistle, Joanne. “Fashion and the Fleshy Body: Dress as Embodied Practice.” Fashion Theory,
- 4:3, April 2015.
- Google. “U Can’t Touch This” search page.” Accessed June, 2023.
- https://www.google.com/search?q=u+can%27t+touch+this&oq=u+can%27t+tou&gs_lcrp
- Hammerman. TV Series. One season, ABC, 1991.
- Ifeanyi, KC. “MC Hammer’s Breakout Smash ‘U Can’t Touch This’ Is 30 Years Old: The Inside
- Story of Its Iconic Video.” Fast Company. January 13, 2020. https://www.fastcompany.com/90450737/mc-hammers-breakout-smash-u-cant-touch-this-is-30-years-old-the-inside-story-of-its-iconic-video
- MC Hammer (@MCHammer). “However I am partial to the Energizer Bunny.” Twitter/X,
- April 7, 2012. https://twitter.com/MCHammer/status/188781590242013185
- MC Hammer. “M.C. Hammer - U Can't Touch This.” February 24, 2009, YouTube video, 4:33.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo
- MC Hammer (@MCHammer). “You bore us.” Twitter/X, February 2, 2021.
- https://twitter.com/MCHammer/status/1363908982289559553
- Nehring, Neil. “Rock around the Academy.” American Literary History 5, no. 4 (1993): 764–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/490047.
- Negrin, Llewellyn. “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Corporeal Experience of Fashion.” In Thinking through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, 115-131 Edited by A. Rocamora & A. Smelik, London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
- Nehring, Neil. “Rock around the Academy.” American Literary History 5, no. 4. 764–91. 1993.
- http://www.jstor.org/stable/490047
- OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). “MC Hammer Shows Oprah How to Dance Like Hammer |
- The Oprah Winfrey Show | Oprah Winfrey Network.” Posted March 1, 2016. YouTube, Video. 1:33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMGukHqp34I.
- Pastorek, Whitney. “20 years ago: MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This.’” Entertainment Weekly,
- January 8, 2010. https://ew.com/article/2010/01/08/20-years-ago-mc-hammers-u-cant-touch-this/
- Rick James Official. “Rick James Discussing ‘You Can’t Touch This.’” Soundcloud.com, 2012.
- Audio interview, 0:50. https://soundcloud.com/rick-james-official/rick-james
- Royster, Philip M. “The Rapper as Shaman for a Band of Dancers of the Spirit: ‘U Can’t Touch This.’” In The Emergency of Black and the Emergence of Rap, Edited by Jon Michael Spencer, 60-67. A Special Edition of Black Sacred Music: A Journal of Theomusicology 5, no 1 (Spring 1991). Duham: Duke University Press, 1991.
- Soul Train. “Soul Train Dancer Tamechi Toney Briggs Influenced A Generation & Created
- Infamous MC Hammer Pants.” Posted December 8, 2021. YouTube, Video, 14:58. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klcJeMw_GfI
- “Spirit of 92nd Street Y: The Harkness Dance Center at 75.” The 92nd Street Y, New York. Youtube video, 3:37. March 2, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04d27eUQv2k
- The Sugar Hill Gang’ Rapper’s Delight. (Various Artists) Warner Music Group, 2018. [originally released in 1984]
- Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again). New York:
- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
- The 92nd St Y. “Spirit of 92nd Street Y: The Harkness Dance Center at 75.” Posted March 2,
- 2009, YouTube, Video, 3:37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04d27eUQv2k
We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website. You can change this setting anytime in Privacy Settings.