Last night I went to Universal Studio’s Mardi Gras for the second time this year, this time to see MC Hammer. Yes, MC Hammer! Prior to the show I was using YouTube to listen to some of his stuff because to be honest, I only knew of two of his songs.
The stage looks pretty bare...
I was looking forward to a little bit of nostalgia and to hear some good music. I mean, I wasn’t a fan of Miranda Lambert but I enjoyed her concert!
Unfortunately, this concert was a train wreck.
It all started with the fact that after the parade went by (about the time BNL took the stage and rocked the house) two Universal employees came out and started throwing beads:
They both had mics and seemed to be trying to hype up the crowd...
They threw beads for about 10 minutes and then started trying to get the crowd to chant stupid things. The crowd turned on them pretty quickly. Finally at about 10:10pm some of MC Hammer’s dancers rambled out on to the stage:
It took them a minute but they ended up in a large circle.
Hammer came out and all appeared good, except for the fact that he was obviously only doing parts of the songs live.
Bad pic, but the guy in white is Hammer
Now I understand that it is difficult for rappers to rap every word live. Most I’ve seen have “back up” rappers who fill in the blanks. It appeared that Hammer was only doing the beginning of each line for the whole night and letting the track do the rest. The guy danced up a storm and that was great but then the train wreck happened.
After EVERY song all the dancers and Hammer would walk off stage in silence, then walk back on. Between almost EVERY song Hammer would ask us “Orlando, how you doing?” Or he would start rambling. Stopping to giggle every couple sentences before finally the track would kick in and he would do a song. Then it would happen again. These awkward moments and silences would last a minute or two between each two minute song. It was rather silly.
He had an army of dancers:
Random shot from the show
At one point they brought out a mic stand for him to stand behind. Yea, stand behind. MC Hammer is known for his dancing…but we got this:
Standing Hammer
Another random shot:
Hammer with dancers...
At one point he brought out his daughter to sing backup (not pictured) and he brought his 13 year old son to dance a pop and lock to a song.
If all this stopping and starting was bad enough came the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Hammer left the stage and for about 7 or 8 minutes he was off camera, with no microphone randomly pulling people over the barricade to go on stage. Not 2 people, not 5 people, like 100 fucking people.
Crowded stage
Yes, this was for “U Can’t Touch This.” Basically these random people (plus more of Hammer’s kids) came out on stage and pranced around “dancing.” Then when the track ended Hammer noticed a random white guy doing his dance moves. Well Hammer and him went back and forth a few times in a sort of “battle” and Hammer got his ass shown up. It was a fitting end to this short concert. Well, it wasn’t really the end because then Hammer introduced some random guy (probably another kid) who started doing his own music.
I think Hammer did 5 or 6 songs and the whole thing took about an hour. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen and while driving home thinking about it something came to me. It was a joke. Hammer and his dancers thought this was a joke. They didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t try to sell anything to the crowd. They were just doing what they could to finish and get out of their with their money. I know that this isn’t the biggest event he has ever done, and it wasn’t full of his hardcore fans, but come on. Put on a show! BNL kicked ass.
Eternal Rambling of a Boy With Two Brains 
I went to this concert too….your review is dead on! It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. We didn’t even realize it was him when he first came out….there was no grand entrance for him. I also found it very bizarre that he walked off stage after every song! He was horrible!
The lipsynching was awful as well. We were maybe 50 feet from the stage, and once when he came into the crowd, we were close enough to touch him, and he was not even pretending to sing.
I was sorely disappointed.
Wow. How sad. He had great stuff to say about Mardi Gras on Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/mchammer. I’m glad I went to the Florida Film Festival instead!