My real, true answer is I wouldn't change one thing. ![]() ![]() "Some people ask me sometimes, would I go back and change things?" he said. You take the Chevrolet, I'll take the Mercedes."Īs Shriver put it in her broadcast, "almost singlehandedly, he's turned rap into the mainstream pop of the '90s."Īnd yet, the 56-year-old has said he has no regrets. I'm just saying, if you want to continue to say what you is is pure rap and so forth, okay, you have that, you can have that. I entertain," the onetime Christian rap artist, known for keeping his lyrics clean, told Shriver. "I say that in, not meaning any disrespect to other rappers or other rap artists. But in every other aspect, the answer is no. "Well, in one unescapable aspect, yes, and that is the fact that I don't sing. It also earned him two MTV Video Music Awards, four Grammys and gave him the validation necessary to brush off complaints that his songs were too pop-heavy to make him a true rapper. The single, and accompanying third disc, Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em rocketed him to success as the first hip hop artist to achieve diamond status (that would be 10 million copies sold). But I'm gonna need the keys to the van.' And he laughed and I laughed, and about a year later he was handing me a Grammy." I remember saying, 'Hey, Bobby, you're the king of the stage right now. "At the time, Bobby had a van with a crown on top of it, because he called his album King of Stage. "On Superfest tour, Bobby and I would indirectly compete to put on a great show," he recalled to Entertainment Weekly in 2010. The words (rapped, because he admittedly couldn't sing), the non-stop, energetic dance moves, the boldness and, of course, the multi-hued Hammer pants were entirely his own, however. 13, 1990 release, the song's base riff was lifted entirely from Rick James' "Super Freak", which pretty much ensured Hammer would have a hit on his hands, but also cost him dearly in a copyright infringement lawsuit later that year. Introduced on The Arsenio Hall Show before its Jan. Then he struck gold, as in the type of metal found on his oversized chains, with "U Can't Touch This". Repackaged as Let's Get It Started two years later, as his first official album with new label Capitol Records, it earned him three top 10 singles. ![]() His 1986 self-released debut, Feel My Power, moved 60,000 copies. So he formed Bustin' Records and got to work selling albums out of the back of his car. And he had borrowed cash from the Athletics' Mike Davis and Dwayne Murphy. He already had the stage name from his days as an Oakland Athletics bat boy, All-Star right fielder Reggie Jackson having graciously likened him to Hammerin' Hank Aaron. So after a stab at community college, he enlisted in the United States Navy.įollowing a multi-year stint as a Third Class Petty Officer, he returned home with the type of discipline needed to accomplish his new dream: Becoming a world-class entertainer. As he put it to Maria Shriver in a 1990 interview, "I know how hard she worked to provide for us as a single parent and I knew that it would break her heart to find that one of her children was involved with any aspect in drugs." His tried his hand at professional baseball, but struck out thanks to what his dad called an inability to hit a curve ball. ![]() Stanley Kirk Burrell was able to avoid the more detrimental influences roaming his East Oakland neighborhood thanks to his mom, a secretary and matriarch of eight kids.
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