FILE â In this Jan. 7, 2013 file photo, actor James Earl Jones poses for photos in Sydney, Australia. James Earl Jones will be recognized for his voiceover career. Jones who is currently starring on Broadway in a revival of âYou Canât Take It With Youâ will be honored with his award Sunday night at the Museum of the Moving Image. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
Rick Rycroft
THE ASSOCIATED PRESs file
MC Hammer performs at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minnesota on Sept. 23, 1990.
His third LP became the first hip-hop record nominated for an album of the year Grammy.
On April 28, 1990, MC Hammer stutter-stepped to No. 1 on
Please Hammer Don t Hurt Em, thanks to the runaway success of its hit single U Can t Touch This. The set ultimately spent 29 weeks in the coveted top spot.
Please Hammer Don t Hurt Em became the first hip-hop full-length to sell 10 million copies, according to the RIAA, as well as the first to be nominated for an album of the year Grammy Award.
With its sample of Rick James Super Freak and a deliriously choreographed music video featuring Hammer in harem pants, U Can t Touch This also topped Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Singled Out.
Many East Bay residents are justifiably proud of the athletes who grew up here. Some fans can rattle off the Hall of Famers in the major sports, including Bill Russell, Frank Robinson, Willie Stargell, Joe Morgan, Ricky Henderson, Gary Payton and Jason Kidd.
In almost every case, the families of these star athletes moved to the East Bay flats from southern states during or shortly after the Second World War, when defense jobs in Oakland and Richmond were plentiful. Segregation often kept Black families in those neighborhoods, even after California passed its fair housing law in 1963.
Not all of the East Bay’s notable athletes were Black Billy Martin, for example, who was white, attended Berkeley High School before signing with the fabled New York Yankees but the influx of African-American families to Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito and Richmond supercharged the local sports scene even as it transformed its politics.
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The story behind MC Hammer’s photo with “Hammerin ” Hank Aaron [Mercury News]
Jan. 23 Perhaps you’ve seen the picture: Late-career Henry Aaron, wearing a Milwaukee Brewers jersey, posing in front of his locker next to a grinning kid in a tank top.
That kid is Stanley Burrell, an Oakland native who grew up to become MC Hammer, a stage-name inspired by Aaron’s nickname.
When news broke Friday morning that Aaron had died, at age 86, Burrell posted the photo on his Twitter account under a tweet that read:
“His dignity unsurpassed. The embodiment of Black Excellence before the term was conceived. He took the arrows, knives and venom of hatred and racism in stride without missing a step. Breaking records but never broken. King of baseball’s kingdom sans a crown.”