Well, if the title of this post doesn’t give away the song I’m apparently a little ashamed to like, nothing will, except perhaps for the video. Here it is …
Like the past entries in my Guilty Pleasures series, I feel the need to explain the nature of my devotion, however shameful, to this song. I’ll begin with a trip, earlier this week, to visit my brother and his wife and newborn son (my first nephew) in the great Northwest. My nephew is just under four months old, and what a wonderful kid he is. Suffice to say that many of the concerns I had about having a kid and being a parent were greatly allayed by my time spent with the happy couple and their son. It was a really fun trip, and I already miss the little guy.
So one day we were hanging out in a park not far from their house. My nephew had just been fed and changed and was not quite ready for his post-prandial nap, so I took the opportunity to play with him for a bit. For whatever reason, the kid loves to stand up, albeit with considerable grown-up help – not many babies of his age can stand on their own I hear – so I was holding him around his chest and back with his feet on my knees. We were dancing and playing and making funny faces when it occurred to me to move his feet rapidly up and down while moving his body from side to side, sort of like MC Hammer’s dance moves in the afore-posted video. This induced gales of laughter from the grown-ups in attendance and reminded me how much I love(d) the song that inspired my nephew’s new dance moves.
After several days of giggling over the episode, and even the composing of new lyrics to the song in question to fit my nephew’s age and lifestyle (“My my my my diaper smells … so bad … look at me cry, I’m so sad!” – God forgive me for that) I began to remember – I can’t believe I’m writing this – the place that MC Hammer had in my musical development. (That was WAY harder to write than you could ever possibly imagine.) So here we go …
- It’s been some time since funk was a frequent visitor to my daily playlist, but, sad as it may be, MC Hammer deserves some credit for introducing me, although without me knowing it at the time, to the classics of funk. Just listen to his song “Turn This Mutha Out” … the prominent Parliament and Incredible Bongo Band samples, the Oak-town pride, the ridiculous dance moves … I was a rising junior in high school when I first that song, and while it wasn’t my first introduction to hip-hop (that credit goes to many older acts), it did first expose me to sampling and the ability of one performer to create an entirely new experience from the efforts of those gone by.
- In fact, I remember when I first heard Parliament, and how very familiar their songs sounded, thanks largely to the appropriation of the late-90s rap music scene. I was at a night club, probably underage, and the house band ripped into what I thought was a medley of the popular rap songs of the day. I was really impressed – who knew that this band of old guys could be so up on contemporary music? Later did I realize that the timeline was backward – the old guys at the club new the classics, while the new kids on the block were the ones who were doing the sampling and borrowing. The song the old guys were playing? You’ll never guess.
- Plus, it’s a ridiculously catchy song, and, as I’ve written before, that is often all I need to confess my guilty pleasure. Not to mention the dance moves, the Hammer pants … seriously, this is good stuff. And while my soul dies a little when I write that, I cannot deny the truth.
So love it or not, this is my latest guilty pleasure. Either way, pray that I move on to less shameful songs in the days to come. Something tells me that my nephew will eventually realize that MC Hammer is best regarded as a relic of the early 90s, and I would be hard pressed to convince him otherwise.
