Have you ever wanted to dance to “U Can’t Touch This,” “Baby Got Back,” “Bust a Move,” Just a Friend,” “Funky Cold Medina” and “Me So Horny” all in one evening? Have you ever wanted to step into an amphitheater and spend the night bathing in other R&B and hip-hop hits of the George H.W. Bush administration performed by the original artists? Have you ever wondered what kind of show the Funky Bunch can put together without Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, then MC Hammer has a tour for you: His Hammer’s House Party Tour is heading all over America with a rotating bill of artists that includes En Vogue, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Kid ‘n Play, Sisqo, Doug E Fresh, Tone Loc, Montell Jordan, Tag Team, Rob Base, Young MC, DJ Kool, Biz Markie, Coolio, The Funky Bunch and 2 Live Crew along with MC Hammer himself.
The tour, which is being billed as Hammer’s first major tour since 1991, is the brainchild of Jeff Epstein of the Universal Attractions Agency. “Hammer continues to be one of our top clients, and he’s one of the hardest working and most giving people I know,” Epstein says in a statement. “The demand for him as a performer has actually increased while he’s been off the touring circuit. He truly is 2 legit to quit!”
MC Hammer is obviously playing every night of the tour, but the other artists vary from show to show. Some nights you get En Vogue and Ton Loc and others you get Sir Mix-a-Lot, Sisqo, Biz Markie, 2 Live Crew and the Funky Bunch or a mixture of several others acts.
The obvious predecessor to Hammer’s House Party Tour is the ongoing I Love The 90’s tour, spearheaded most nights by Vanilla Ice and Salt N Pepa. But they have no shows on the books after February ends, so Hammer’s team clearly saw an opening and walked into it. They even signed up I Love The 90’s vets Tone Loc, Coolio and Young MC.
If all this is too newfangled for you, there’s also the Lost 80’s Live Tour with A Flock of Seagulls, Wang Chung, The Escape Club and John “St. Elmo’s Fire” Parr. And if your nostalgia sweet spot is the early 2000s, there was the 2016 My2K Tour tour with 98 Degrees, Ryan Cabrera, Dream and O-Town, but it wasn’t a huge success and they didn’t try it again. It was maybe just a little too soon.