Throwback Thursday: MC Hammer Vs Michael Jackson

Throwback Thursday is about celebrating the classics – the songs, music videos and movies that made us fall in love with pop culture to begin with.

This Thursday: When you think MC Hammer, you tend to think of Aladdin pants, mega-debt and maybe that weird cartoon he was in. But this week I’m here to tell you about the time Hammer decided to fight his mortal enemy, Michael Jackson.

Oh man, when it comes to Hammer’s hit 2 Legit 2 Quit, where do I even begin? I mean, there’s the fact that, in what was probably a big push to top the King of Pop, Hammer helped conceive this 10 minute, 48 second long monstrosity of a video, which vacillates between being a mini-movie worthy of Thriller or Smooth Criminal and being an overlong but energetic dance video worthy of Sisqo.

But let’s go back to the start here. We kick things off in the gaudy mansion of one James Brown (yes, that James Brown) as the King of Soul shuffles about, grunting to himself like he’s in Eddie Murphy’s skit about him from Delirious before taking his rightful place on his golden throne. Hammer meanwhile is downstairs, working out in a way that makes this video somehow simultaneously the most and least homoerotic thing I have ever seen in my whole life.

He is straight-up shadow boxing in a speedo, inside a dark room with only a single light source available from above. Based on the evidence, I can only imagine that this video is trying to illustrate that James Brown had at some point kidnapped Hammer and forced him to live in these conditions to toughen him the fuck up. And to accurately rub the lotion on his skin of course.

This is when we segue on over to Hammer’s concert where his fans have grown bored waiting for the star of the show to arrive. Two kids in particular are having a rough time of it and plan to leave if Hammer doesn’t show up in 15 minutes. It’s lucky for them that the MC has ascended the steps to the King of Soul’s throne room to determine if he’s ready. The whole scene is pretty much as baller as it is B-grade, with Hammer woodenly promising to “go out and TAKE the respect and [propers?] that you’ve earned, which one man refuses to give to you”.

Brown responds by firing bolts of ‘soul fire’ to his “Godson” in order to charge him up for his clash with “The Gloved One”. This allows Hammer to do a Power Rangers style transformation into his true form, summon multiple dancers and then fly through the roof to take part in his own concert.

Hammer then performs his epic dance moves at his concert, including the classic “2 Legit 2 Quit” dance move, which involves people making peace signs for the ’2′s, “L” signs for the ‘Legit’, and slicing motions for the ‘Quit’ parts.

The madness culminates in a scene of Michael Jackson watching Hammer’s performance from a private viewing room (where he must’ve done it 35 minutes ago, I’m guessing?) and doing the same gesture from the performance, indicating that Hammer is in fact the superior dancer. It’s basically the most batshit thing I’ve ever seen and I love it. According to an interview with the Reverend MC Hammer himself, Jackson gave the OK for the video’s ending himself during a phone conversation with the rapper, praising his work.

Jackson and Hammer even both showed up at James Brown’s funeral (in which the King of Soul must have returned from the dead as a giant flaming jive turkey) to eulogize about their shared “Godfather”.