The chart’s legit. Either work hard or you might as well quit
—“U Can’t Touch This,” by MC Hammer, Rick James,
and Alonzo Miller (1990)
Although Rick had occasionally made favorable gestures in rap’s direction, he was no fan of the form, and really didn’t want rappers to sample his work. In fact, Rick had often said how much he disliked rap. “Some groups that rap really have substance, but a lot of them are just rapping a lot of nonsense,” he told an interviewer in 1985. “That stuff is here today, gone tomorrow.”
Rick refused to allow sampling of his songs for years, partly because he found the very practice of sampling depressing. “The government took music out of the schools, and kids have no way to learn an instrument or theory and harmony,” he told the A.V. Club, “so they have to resort to sampling. If music were taught in schools, kids would learn how to create on their own.” The success of the Motown Record Corporation in Detroit, many believe, was based in part on the extensive music education program offered in the 1950s and ’60s in the Detroit public schools. Once that program ended, music in Detroit and elsewhere suffered.
A master stage performer himself, Rick also put down the rappers for what he saw as their poor performance skills. “The majority of them don’t have an idea of what it is to entertain a crowd,” he told the Washington Post. “Holding on to your [anatomy], walking back and forth with your baseball hat turned backwards, throwing your hands up. . . . That ain’t [expletive] entertainment.” Rick said what he most disliked about rappers was their constant use of the n-word and put-downs of women. As he told the A.V. Club, “I’m so down on that word that I had trouble relating to it. . . . I don’t like the derogativeness [sic] of what a lot of [rap] says and the demeaning fact of how it puts the race.” Much rap “seems to be all about how women are hoes and bitches. Number one, my mother’s not a ho, and not no bitch, and she never was. And I’m sure a lot of [rappers] don’t want to hear their mamas and sisters called hoes and bitches.”
As sampling’s popularity kept growing, however, Johnson finally proposed that Rick sample his own work, thereby “beating the rappers at their own game.” Rick refused, so Johnson, noting the potential revenue involved, argued that in that case, “we should get the rappers to use our music.” Rick said he didn’t want to get involved but that Johnson could do it.
Johnson then called MC Hammer to suggest he sample Rick’s work, Hammer accepted the idea wholeheartedly, and used the very recognizable bass line from “Super Freak” in his song “U Can’t Touch This.” This was not only a great compliment to Rick and Motown but also briefly revived Rick’s career.
A sample of a few seconds of the instrumental portion of “Super Freak,” repeated over and over, was the entire musical score of “U Can’t Touch This,” except for a couple of interventions by a background chorus and a brief bridge. (Hammer’s contributions were the rap lyrics that dominated the song and the hip-hop dancing on the song’s video version.)
Stone City Band member Levi Ruffin said that one day in 1990 a friend called him and asked him if he’d heard it. “I said no, so I put on the radio and I said, ‘goddamn, that’s us! [meaning the Stone City Band playing the bass line from ‘Super Freak’],’ and my friend said, ‘No, that’s Hammer!’” Ruffin says. “Rick didn’t know Hammer was going to take the whole damn hook, the whole fucking thing.”
Rick was shocked when he heard “U Can’t Touch This.” “What the hell is going on here?” he asked Johnson, and protested in public. Johnson reminded Rick that he had agreed to let his music be marketed to rappers, but Rick decided to keep the feud going in public to increase sales of his own records, which it did. He even told people he had filed a lawsuit against Hammer that had been settled out of court.
“When the first check [for royalties for using the “Super Freak” bass line] came in, Rick was very happy,” Johnson says. Rick also obtained cowriting credit on Hammer’s version of the song for himself and Alonzo Miller, the cowriter of “Super Freak.” Hammer’s name was on the song, and his revenues were also high, so Hammer was happy too.
Ruffin claims Rick eventually made $800,000 every three months from “U Can’t Touch This” and that during this period Rick made more money from rappers, mostly Hammer, than he did from the sales of his own records. Still, Rick never really admired rap or rappers. Although he called being sampled “a very high form of compliment,” he always expressed annoyance at rarely being credited by the samplers. “Yes, it’s their rap,” he told Billboard. “But it’s our fucking music. If [the samplers] think their rap is what’s really getting it over, try playing it without our shit.” Various reviewers, taking their cue from Rick, accused Hammer of “borrowing,” “stealing,” or “pirating” the “Super Freak” bass line.
Realizing that keeping the controversy going would sell more records, Hammer struck back at Rick by comparing Rick unfavorably to the Chi-Lites, whose 1971 song “Have You Seen Her” Hammer had also sampled. “I’ve seen [the Chi-Lites] in several situations and they made a point to contact me and say thank you for reviving their career,” he said pointedly.
As rumors continued to leak out that there was no actual dispute between Rick and Hammer, the two staged a public “reconciliation” in Buffalo in October 1990. Wearing his bolero hat and his gaucho outfit, Rick shook hands with Hammer backstage at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. The two men smiled warmly at each other and exchanged compliments. They then went out and jammed onstage in front of fifteen thousand fans, who greeted them with massive applause.
Rick complimented Hammer on his use of the song, saying it was good “because he didn’t degrade black people in it and didn’t get off anything that was demeaning.”
Hammer told Rick, “Whenever I think about doing a new song, first thing I do is look at your stuff. . . . Good stuff lasts a long time. It’s like fine wine. Gets better with the years.” Hammer insisted he’d been a fan of Rick’s “from the first record [he] heard.”
“U Can’t Touch This” rose to number 8 on the Billboard pop Top 40 chart and remained on the chart for thirteen weeks, becoming, in the words of one reviewer, “a crowd-thumping anthem heard in every sports arena in the country.” The tune also rose to number 1 on the R&B chart and stayed in that position for one week. For their 1989 and 1990 NBA championship victories, the Detroit Pistons informally adopted it as their anthem.
“U Can’t Touch This” was the most popular single on the MC Hammer album Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ’Em. That album rose to number 1 on the Billboard top pop albums chart and stayed on the chart for 108 weeks. It also rose to number 1 on the top R&B albums chart, where it stayed for twenty-nine weeks. Certified by the RIAA as having sold ten million copies, it became one of the biggest sellers in hip-hop history and the fifth-bestselling rap album of all time.
The resurrection of part of “Super Freak” via Hammer, which occurred while Rick was in a down cycle in 1990, benefited Rick by reminding everyone how good the original was. There were more obvious benefits for “U Can’t Touch This” too. When DJs heard Hammer had sampled “Super Freak,” they were motivated to yank Hammer’s rendition out of the pile of newly released discs and air it immediately. Some DJs went so far as to blend “Super Freak” and “U Can’t Touch This” into what one reviewer called a “strange duet.”
Hammer, Rick, and Miller shared the Best Rhythm & Blues Song Grammy Award for “U Can’t Touch This” in 1990, Rick’s only Grammy. Hammer won the Best Rap Solo Performance Grammy as well.
Two Grammy Awards couldn’t protect “U Can’t Touch This” from some scathing criticism, however. The New York Times called it “less a song than a noisy sonic toy whose music is only marginally more sophisticated than the sound effects of Nintendo.” Another reviewer said Hammer merely “motor-mouthed a lot of inane lyrics” on top of “Super Freak.”
But there were continued benefits for Rick. Encouraged by Hammer’s success with “Super Freak,” Will Smith, who had started as a rapper named the Fresh Prince before becoming a TV and movie star, used some samples of Rick’s other music on his 1991 tune “I’m All That.” Numerous other rappers have sampled Rick in the ensuing decades as well.