MC Hammer, former rapper and now self-made social media icon and entrepreneur recently spoke at Sydney’s ‘Social Media Club’. Lin Ma reports.

MC Hammer, former rapper and now social media icon

Befriending MC Hammer was almost too easy for Iain McDonald, founder of Australian digital agency, Amnesia Razorfish. Aware that Hammer was an avid consumer of social media, McDonald, while speaking at a conference in Las Vegas, sent a casual Twitter message to the former artist hoping to demonstrate the power of social media to his audience. “If @mchammer replies with msg I will drop pants in front of worlds top ad ppl on stage.”

Twenty minutes later McDonald found himself trouser-less on stage, even gracing the front cover of AdWeek the next day.

“When we look at brands, Hammer is a one-man brand that gets it,” he said, during a Social Media Club event at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Famous for his parachute pants and 90s hit, Can’t Touch This, MC Hammer has gone from popular rapper, to preacher, and now a self-made social media icon and entrepreneur, with more than 1.6 million Twitter followers around the globe. He also reportedly lectures at Harvard Business School about the merits of social media.

“I believe in staying connected, literally almost 24 hours a day,” Hammer said, addressing the social media crowd. “If you walk around to my house… there’s a screen here, a screen there. And if I go to the restroom, there’s a desktop over here.”

Speaking about his favourite topic, Twitter and social media, he urges businesses and celebrities to embrace the digital age, and engage with their online audience. “Don’t let anyone else tell your story,” he said. “If you’re not connected, what are you hiding from as a brand? Don’t run; engage.”

Hammer said there is an unspoken rule for celebrities to maintain a certain image for their fans.

“[For example] you have this image of this very romantic singer, and then you [find out] that he’s not romantic at all – so the fantasy’s over right? You find out that Don Juan is not Don Juan,” he said.

“So you have to be careful. You do have a certain image and you want to continue to serve your audience,” he said. “Perception is more valuable than reality.”

At the same time, Hammer said he is more compelled to be himself these days.

“I feel pressured to be myself now more than ever,” he said. “An artist decides that this is what he or she wants to be – and then they dress a certain way, make a certain song, cater to a certain image that they created – but you don’t want to be that all day long. I mean, I don’t rhyme to my kids.

“It is more important to be yourself, than an image.”

And yet for Hammer and his household, life does imitate art sometimes.

“I have a four-year old son and he’ll go and grab his Hammer pants, jump into bed and gives me a look like, ‘Don’t you wish you had a pair?’

Asked if he Tweets differently when wearing Hammer pants, he said: “Yeh I get inspired by the pants.”