'U Can't Touch This' at 25: Remembering MC Hammer's Breakthrough Single — billboard.com

One thing hip-hop doesn't do is pause. The mantra of this music has always been "can't stop, won't stop," and there's no guarantee the flavor of any given week will make it past Wednesday. That's one reason MC Hammer's breakthrough single is so remarkable. "Stop!" the Oakland rapper born Stanley Kirk Burrell proclaims on "U Can't Touch This," released 25 years ago today, on January 13, 1990. "Hammer time!" For a couple of years in the early '90s, Hammer held the fickle public's imagination, taking hip-hop places it had never been before. He became a Saturday morning cartoon, a movie and TV star, and a pitchman for countless products, among them Mattel dolls created in his likeness. None of it would've happened without his signature song.

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