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 song heavily samples Rick James's "Super Freak"; Rick James is credited as the 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 (San Francisco) Bay" and as being "magic on the mic," which Hammer assures us, combine with Rick James's "beat that you can't touch" to create the perfect rap song. While some critics, especially in the nascent gangsta rap community, disagreed, enough people agreed to secure Hammer the Grammies for Best R&B Song and Best Rap Solo Performance.
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.Song's occurrences in the mediaCommercials
- Anti-bacterial hand cream Purell.
- Insurance firm Nationwide in a . 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).
- Anti-child abuse commercials.
- 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
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 U 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.
- South Park, as "Simpsons Already Did It"
- 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
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 a recently created Macromedia Flash game called StickArena, when you kill somebody with a sledgehammer, one dialog that sometimes appears says, "You taught about hammertime"
- 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!"
- Arnold Schwarzenegger's solo karaoke, Arnie Hammertime, produced by 'Effigy' during the dark years appears most often in the video game "Counter-Strike Source".
- 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).
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