Amazing Music Video of the Day: MC Hammer - "Better Run Run"

MC Hammer… excuse me, King Hammer (he must've landed a job at BK) has inexplicably obtained internet access.  He heard what's been said about him and has had enough. The final straw was a few lines in Jay-Z’s verse on “So Appalled” from Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Friday series in which Jay acknowledges Hammer’s past financial woes and vows not to make the same mistakes. However, Hammer took this statement of fact as a diss and immediately announced that there would be answer.  Over a month later, the answer is here. Hammer released the song and video for “Better Run Run”, making it clear that he has some things he wants Hov, and you, to know. So LISTEN CLOSE! (Seriously, audio levels are very low in the beginning).

Hammer wants you to know that he is not broke. To convince you of this, he uses the ingenious tactic of awkwardly highlighting things that are not that impressive.  He is the CEO of a minor MMA management company. And he is not the hands-off, do-nothing CEO you might expect. He will walk right into a company meeting that is in progress and stand there talking on his cellphone. Besides interrupting meetings around cramped conference tables, he has also relaxed the "no-sunglasses inside" rule prevalent in far too many offices these days.

He also wants you to know that he is associated in some way with the website cardwoo.com (either that or he wants you to know that he is interested in purchasing gift cards at a discount). He wants you to know that he can afford a Beats Audio laptop just like Dr. Dre (they are pretty expensive for PCs), and he puts all that processing power designed for maximum audio performance to work doing spreadsheets and looking at his own company’s website (which is apparently “good in three dimensions”). He wants you to know that one of his company’s clients (and possible board members?) is Ultimate Fighter loser Brendan Schaub. The one thing that can bring his successful and efficient business operations to a screeching halt, however, is when someone makes a comment about when Hammer was once bankrupt.

This is where the song comes in, and it certainly is “the fie, boy”! In his trilogy of dazzling 8 bar verses (16s are overrated, anyway), Hammer lets Jay, or “Gay” as he so cleverly refers to him, know that Hammer does in fact have a “reason to doubt” him, and that he does not even “roc" Jay's "wear”. He also notifies Jay that if he answers his door when Hammer knocks, he will get both knocked out and busted in the mouth, in that order. Finally, he accuses Jay of stealing his swag (which would explain why it has been missing since the early 90s) and even leaving his fingerprints on the bag that Hammer kept said swag in. But throwing these merciless lyrical haymakers (and demonstrating his less-merciless literal haymakers in the octagon on some pads that presumably made fun of him also) isn’t enough to quell the anger inside of him. So, taking a page from Kevin Bacon in Foot Loose, Hammer goes on to dance out his rage, and it becomes clear that Jigga just got served.

Hammer is not done, though, as he seems to have also jumped on the popular “Jay-Z is affiliated with the Illuminati” train (very effectively explained here). Because some people have speculated that this connection may exist, and because the historical group did not endorse organized religion, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Jay sold his soul to the devil. Hammer depicts this in a very interesting way: by showing a man that looks very little like Jay-Z (aside from the Yankees hat, of course) write lyrics (which Jay famously does not do) incorrectly and out of order (“Life begins when da church ends/ Jesus can’t save you”) while a certain red-hued and horned individual accompanies him in the studio bobbing his head off-beat. It’s pretty stylized and perhaps even a little abstract, but we think the message Hammer is trying to convey is that the devil did in fact have a hand in Jay’s success and, after this video, we are definitely convinced.

Despite being easily upset by references to his past broke-assedness, inside, Hammer is still a compassionate dude (a “King of Heart”, if you will). Thus, even if Jay-Z is a devil-worshiping swag-snatcher, Hammer still has love for him. He makes this clear by showing the same Jay non-lookalike running through a wooded area with the devil hot on his heels. In a display of his awesome power, Hammer stiff-arms the devil, stopping him dead in his tracks and saving the day. The song ends, but the video does not. We are then treated to one final scene once again showing Hammer’s kindness, as he mouths words, pretending to talk to "not-Jay" (who, in turn, pretends not to hear the words that Hammer didn’t say) before Hammer unexpectedly and forcibly baptizes him, thereby saving his soul from eternal damnation. It’s an incredibly moving music video with some very powerful imagery. Check it out below.