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LISTEN: Unreleased MC Hammer Song Written By Tupac

An MC Hammer song has surfaced which was written by the late Tupac Shakur. The song, titled Too Tight, was meant to feature on MC Hammer’s album by the same name during his brief tenure at Death Row Records.

Never does a year go by without Tupac making the news one way or another. If it isn’t some previously unheard track, it’s someone talking about how the rapper influenced their own music or at the very least a sighting of the man himself. It’s perhaps not that surprising, since what we know about the last few months of the late rapper’s life paints a portrait of an artist who had locked himself in the studio, hell-bent on making as much music as humanly possible.

During his brief stint at Death Row Records, MC Hammer was hard at work attempting to pull together an album (Too Tight). Although we now know that the death of his friend and collaborator, Tupac Shakur, ultimately lead to him leaving the record label and forsaking the album. It’s been rumoured for several years, that Tupac had a hand in crafting at least one of the songs on MC Hammer’s album that never was. Evidence of this surfaced in 2008 with a video being released of Tupac working at the studio on a version of the song, although the version we see in the 2008 video had Tupac rapping the verses instead of MC Hammer.

Too Tight is a fairly standard bragging song, with that 90’s G-funk seeping through its melodic keyboard and bravado filled lyrics.

“I caught some playa-hatin’ punks talkin’ about my style
I’m gettin’ money doing this for a while
But immature square using bad grammar
I hit the city and they screamin’ ‘You da man Hammer!’
Holla if you understand me,”

It’s a good thing that this unreleased track came with the disclaimer that it was ghost written by Tupac Shakur, since for anyone who’s familiar with his lyrics would most likely accuse MC Hammer of biting his style. In saying that, MC Hammer totally holds his own rapping to the beat and the song in itself, although presumably almost 20 years old, holds up entirely.

Listen to the song below and don’t even try to tell me if you wouldn’t cop the full album if it dropped tomorrow.

Image: A Journal Of Musical Things