MC Hammer turns to cyberspace

Edwina Scott | 10th November 2009

HOW does an ageing hip hop artist make a comeback? Post a few thousand tweets, for a start.

MC Hammer

AAP

HOW does an ageing hip hop artist make a comeback?

Post a few thousand tweets, for a start.

MC Hammer, of rapper royalty, is making his name less these days as king of the diamond album and more as a passionate user of social media.

After losing most of his $33 million fortune and filing for bankruptcy in 1996, he became a preacher and started looking for new ventures.

The consummate performer knows the power of an audience and has used 6,500 tweets on networking site Twitter and a six-year-old blog to boost his profile and communicate with fans in cyberspace.

One of his first forays into Twitter involved a discussion of his early childhood, he told reporters on a promotional tour in Melbourne.

"I was born in the Sixties and in the first 10 years of my life five prominent men of the world were all assassinated," he said on Monday.

"Every prominent positive male figure in America was assassinated - John F Kennedy, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy ...

"So I tweeted that out and said if you were alive in the time and you had awareness what were you and what did you feel in '62 - and then my whole page filled up with responses."

Attracted by the immediacy of the platform, Hammer is now recognised as the 14th most popular musician on Twitter, with more than 1.6 million followers.

"You can communicate with (audiences) on-demand, real-time, 24 hours a day," he enthuses.

"Communicating in 140 characters is very similar to communicating in song form.

"We write songs and in three minutes ... we try and paint an entire picture."

His entrepreneurial spirit doesn't stop at technology either.

At 47, Hammer even has fashion designers on board, bringing US consumers versions of his distinctive "Hammer" parachute pants, but music remains central to his profile.

Planning his 20th anniversary tour, Hammer will spend 2010 touring and celebrating the success of his 1990 album Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em and the tumultuous years that followed.

"We'll get a piece of it down here, that's for sure," he promises.