MC Hammer, The Least Likely Financial Guru

[![](http://blog.stanfordreview.org/content/images/2010/02/mc-hammer-250x300.jpg "Can You Touch This?")](http://blog.stanfordreview.org/content/images/2010/02/mc-hammer.jpg)

Can You Touch This?

I can’t believe I missed this event where MC Hammer [came](http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/02/23/mc-lays-down-the-hammer/) to the GSB and talked about entrepreneurship. While some may argue that MC Hammer, as a rapper, should not be giving entrepreneurial advice to students, I disagree, and in fact [wrote](http://stanfordreview.org/article/the-decline-of-the-hip-hop-empire) something to that effect when Chamillionaire came to campus. Chamillioniare was extremely thoughtful and demonstrated that in fact he had been an early adapter and innovator in terms of merging music and social media.

But in terms of money matters, you can probably do better than MC Hammer, right? Isn’t this a bit like asking Cookie Monster to speak on etiquette? I mean, this is the guy that had a 40-person entourage and ended up being so broke as a result of his absurdly lavish spending practices–remember that his Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em was once the best-selling rap CD of all-time in America, and today sits in third–that he appeared in a Super Bowl ad last year playing up his reputation:

I didn’t go to the event, but perhaps it was helpful, particularly since he lived in both extreme wealth and poverty, and apparently is a big hit on Twitter these days (which of course is for old people), and might have some insight into how to avoid the type of financial mismagement that left him broke, even if he doesn’t regret it.

Perhaps most importantly, regardless of whether he blew his money on gold medallions of himself wearing a gold medallion, you can’t say the guy didn’t make a big pile of money in the first place, and since the topic at hand was “New Music Models: New Paths to Revenue and New Opportunities,” it is hard to argue with MC Hammer’s bona fides on that particular topic. That said, it still is bizarre to think of him as someone with constructive advice on anything business-related.