Check out the newest song "Rollin Alone" by KING SHABAZZ which features South African Artist Tiga Maine! The song has just went Double-Bronze by having over 50,000 plays on Soundcloud. Listen to the song here!
MC Hammer was one of the earliest artists to help expand the brand of Hip Hop. Due to his success as an artist and his ability to make music that could span multiple audiences, he was often bestowed with much sponsorship. MC Hammer received endorsements from Pepsi, had his own cartoon series, and even his own clothing line. At the time, other hip hop heads felt that Hammer was being too commercial and ruining the genre.
However, as we look at Hip Hop today and the music industry as a whole, music artists are not making as much money from music as they once did. In today’s era, it is almost a necessity to have at least 3 other sources of income to complement the music in order to be truly successful. When we look at guys like Drake, who is arguably the leader of the pop rap genre, he has lots of endorsements and additional sources of income adjacent to his music. The ability for artists to be able to do this can be looked at as a result of what MC Hammer did decades ago.
With MC Hammer’s release of his 3rd studio album “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em”, he forever solidified his place in Hip Hop history. With the album’s release in 1990, it was also accompanied by a movie of the same name. This album was ranked number one on the Billboard 200 for 21 weeks, which at the time, was record breaking.
Additionally, the album was the first ever hip hop album to be certified Diamond by the RIAA for sales of over 10 million copies and it remains one of hip hop’s all-time best selling albums. With an accomplishment of this magnitude, Hammer showed the world that Hip Hop has a place in the world and it can battle with those of other genres. This also set the stage for future Diamond certified artists like TuPac, Biggie, Eminem, Outcast, etc…