U Can't Touch This
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U Can't Touch This was far and away M.C. Hammer's most successful single. It propelled sales of its album, Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em which became ["the biggest-selling rap album of all time at ten million copies."] The song heavily samples Rick James's "Super Freak"; Rick James is credited as a co-author. The lyrics, written entirely by Hammer, are in the boastful self-promotional style common in old-school hip-hop. They describe the rapper as having "toured around the world, from London to the
This song was parodied by "Weird Al" Yankovic as "I Can't Watch This," and can be found on his album Off the Deep End.
Nowadays the song is mostly known as a nostalgia piece.
Contents
Song's occurrences in the media
Commercials
- Anti-bacterial hand cream Purell.
- Insurance firm Nationwide in a [commercial]. Hammer himself also starred in the commercial, which spoofs his bankruptcy.
- Connecticut Light and Power's television and radio ads, where "U can't touch this!" is used whenever power lines are mentioned (visually or verbally).
- Diet Pepsi/Pepsi One commercial, "I wanna kick it old school."
- Toyota commercial.
- Hand sanitizer commercial for Lysol (U Can't Touch Germs!)
- Lay's chips
- Acura 3.2 TL commercial
- Citibank TV commercial for credit account. Aired in Norway 2006
Movies
- Class Act (1992)
- Hot Shots!
- Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996) One of the main characters, Crazy Legs, is asked if he has a dream. He thinks about the question for a second then the film dissolves into a dream sequence that features the crippled Crazy Legs performing a long, choreographed dance sequence wearing parachute pants to an instrumental version of "U Can't Touch This."
- The Right Connections (1997) (TV)
- The Master of Disguise (2002)
- (2003)
- Shark Tale (2004)
- White Chicks
- Bubble Boy
- Eurotrip In Bratislava, the old guy says "Stop, Hammertime!"
- American Dreamz (2006)
Television episodes
- The Cosby Show
- Family Guy: "E. Peterbus Unum"; Peter Griffin becomes president of Petoria, and sings "Can't Touch Me!"
- Fresh Prince of Bel Air
- Perfect Strangers, performed by the main characters
- Sesame Street, parody You Shouldn't Touch This was used to warn children about touching things like electric fences and raw sewage.
- The Simpsons, as "I Didn't Do It". When Bart is in the studio recording this single(in the episode "Bart Gets Famous"), Hammer is outside the booth. In the Treehouse of Horror IX segment "Hell Toupee", Homer (with executed criminal Snake's hair transplanted to his scalp) says "It's hammer time" when getting ready to bludgeon Bart.
- South Park, in the episode "Simpsons Already Did It", while the boys search the lab for their "seamen", Tweek is guard at the door, with the code word being "Hammertime". However he forgets this, and starts singing the song to remember before screaming "HAMMERTIME!"
- Greg the Bunny, the song is heard throughout the episode "The Singing Mailman", Dottie claimed that in college she made a tape of her stripping to "U Can't Touch This" for a dental school student she was dating, who was an M.C. Hammer fan.
- In Living Color, Tommy Davidson portrays M.C. Hammer in a parody titled ["Can't Touch This"]
Other
- Video game of the movie Shark Tale
- Performed live at the MTV Video Music Awards 2005
- Rewritten version used in the Tumble Time Tigger plush toy
- In World of Warcraft as Orc Dance (male).
Uses of the word \"hammertime!\"
The word "hammertime" from the song ("Stop! (two-beat pause) Hammertime!") has appeared in numerous other contexts:- Graffiti has appeared on stop signs around the world with the word "hammertime" underneath the "STOP".
- In the Half-Life mod, The Specialists there is a level called "Hammertime". The song plays from a radio in the level.
- "Hammertime" often appears as a humorous caption to magazine articles.
- Skateboarders use the term to refer to a particularly courageous and extreme manoeuvre, also called "throwing down a hammer".
- It has been used in academia (possibly originating at the New York University School of Law) to refer to either the time period in which class has officially expired, yet the professor keeps talking and refuses to excuse the class, or the awkward pause between when a professor calls on an unsuspecting student (the much-feared hallmark of the Socratic Method of instruction) and when the student comes up with an answer.
- In an episode Kenan and Kel, Kenan says to Kel "C'mon, It's Hammer time!" and Kel replies "Kenan? Kenan? It hasn't been Hammertime for five years!"
- Comedian Jimmy Fallon's The Bathroom Wall album features a song called "Hammertime" that cobbles together amusing lyrics from several unrelated songs.
- The Angry Rooster website created a plugin to the web browser Firefox that causes the computer to respond "Hammertime!" whenever the "Stop" button is pressed. [link]
- In the United Kingdom it has become popular for youths such as goths and followers of Rock Music to paraphrase Hammer, by using the line "Stop... Hammertime!", this is to mock Hip Hop Rappers but also to show their admiration for the 1980s.
- In the Seinfeld episode "The Baby Shower", Kramer convinces Jerry to steal cable TV by saying "Man, it's the nineties... It's Hammer time!"
- The phrase "And now, it's Hammer time!" was used by the title character in the satirical police sitcom Sledge Hammer! a full three years before "U Can't Touch This" was released (in the episode "State of Sledge," which aired January 10, 1987).
- In the Eminem song "Just Lose It" the line "Stop!... Pyjama Time!" is used.
- In the MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing, one of the adventures involves a man coming up to the player carrying a hammer and saying, "Hey, man, it's hammer time!"
- In the video game , the Hammer Bros. boss uses an attack called Hammer Time.
- In the video game and its expansion The Frozen Throne, Dwarf Griffon Riders, an Alliance unit, speak the phrase "It's hammer time!" upon completion of their training at the Gryphon Aviary building.
- The Detroit Pistons used "hammertime" as their slogan at one time.
External links
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