DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 1997          TAG: 9711190529

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   88 lines

FALLEN RAP STAR TURNS TO GOSPEL

In the early 1990s, M.C. Hammer was the hottest franchise in the rap industry.

Rap flourished after the 1990 release of ``Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'em,'' which topped the U.S. charts for 21 consecutive weeks.

Critics said Hammer's subject matter was light, his rapping uneven and his music recycled funk and soul riffs. Wearing trademark baggy trousers, Hammer danced mightily through ``U Can't Touch This'' and, critics be damned, it became the year's most popular song and video.

He moved records by the millions. His concerts were energetic spectacles. In 1991, Forbes magazine listed him as the 19th highest-paid entertainer.

Today, Hammer is trying to emerge from bankruptcy, which he declared last year. Published reports estimated $13.7 million in debts against $9.6 million in assets. His multimillion-dollar home is up for sale.

Hammer was in Hampton Roads on Tuesday to appear on ``The 700 Club'' and promote his forthcoming album. It will be rap with a new attitude and slant: gospel.

During the Tuesday morning broadcast, Hammer discussed his rise and fall from rap grace. And his decision to embrace gospel rap.

``I'm making gospel music now because I want to,'' he said. ``I see (rapping) as a whole, completely different mission, as a platform to draw people into the goodness of God. . . .

``I don't like where the music has evolved. It's not that the lyrical content isn't there, but what they're saying is bad.''

Too many rappers, he said, ``are trying to get paid, make a hit, make a crowd move. Very few rappers have a message.''

Hammer spoke of the strain constant touring put on his marriage, the lavish lifestyle he enjoyed and the huge entourage that followed him around the world - and of why he is reconnecting to his roots.

``I had a good time doing those things, but it was time to go back to the Lord,'' Hammer told the Christian Broadcasting Network audience.

``Here I come,'' he laughed, ``to show them how to do it again.''

In his heyday, Hammer was one of the most influential artists in a music that grew when the Sugarhill Gang released ``Rapper's Delight'' in 1979.

Since then, rap's foundation has been raw rhythm beneath a verbal delivery somewhere between talking and singing. With urban street life as a common theme, rap grew bolder. Often militant, profane and angry, rap drew fire from censors and critics.

Compared with acts such as Ice Cube and N.W.A., Hammer's message was positive. His tempered brashness was marketable.

Hammer's most successful material was hip-hop party music. When sales waned, he was not immune to the demand for harder rap and street credibility, dropping the ``M.C.'' for his next album, which sold fewer copies than ``Please Hammer.''

His next effort came after a three-year hiatus. The 1994 release, ``The Funky Headhunter,'' was a tougher style of rap that featured collaborations with producers from the ``gangsta'' rap genre. But the album failed to catch on with listeners.

``I watched some tough things transpire,'' Hammer said, adding that he felt his spiritual life suffer as he let business - the fame, the fortune, the touring, ``everything the world could offer'' - control him.

What was missing, he said, was faith.

Early in his career, Hammer noted, his rapping was a platform for Scripture. He had at least one gospel cut per album, including the 1992 hit ``Pray'' from ``Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'em.''

Though his upcoming album will be mostly gospel rap (with a commercial song or two tossed in for good measure), the 35-year-old Oakland, Calif., native said he has never been too far from his life as Stanley K. Burrell. He was a bat boy for the Oakland A's, a failed pro baseball hopeful, a sailor and a church-going Bible reader who rapped with the ``Holy Ghost Boys.''

While popular rap is still a mainstay on the charts, the urban allure, the ``thug life,'' and violent feuds between East and West Coast rappers have claimed the lives of top performers such as Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.

Fashioning a tough image is nothing new, Hammer said, and the storytelling rappers relating street life rely on shock value to hook listeners. There is no denying rap's impact on American culture, fashion, marketing, even pro sports, but Hammer said the artists moving their product should rethink what they're selling.

``I showed them how to cross racial lines,'' he said. ``And now rappers sell you everything from malt liquor to leather coats. They said I was soft; now they tell jokes - they do situation comedies. Sit-coms.''

Those who criticized his ``soft'' rapping - those he tried to please before his fall from commercial grace - should take stock, he said.

``You can either be a good influence or a bad influence,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

STEVE EARLEY\The Virginian-Pilot

Hammer, who was a dominant force in rap music in the early '90s,

discussed his venture into gospel rap Tuesday on ``The 700 Club.'' KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY

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