MC Hammer seriously can’t take a joke, can he?

After Jay-Z took a slight jab at the rapper-minister-Cash4Gold spokesman (OK,  maybe it was just one commercial) in a verse on Kanye West’s “So Appalled,” making light of Hammer's well-documented financial problems, the "Too Legit to Quit" rapper took to Twitter and  promised retaliation. 

“Hammer went broke, so you know I’m more focused/I lost 30 mil’, so I spent another 30/’Cause unlike Hammer, 30 million can’t hurt me,” Jay-Z rapped on one of West's G.O.O.D. Friday tracks.

The reminder of Hammer's infamous bankruptcy proved to be a breaking point for the rapper.

“The Answer to Jay comes on Oct 31 (Devils Nite) ..I saw him coming...” he tweeted. Hammer later posted a link to a 36-second video of himself going to town on a punching bag (he even created a special #hellboy hashtag that he uses in reference to Jigga). 

A day later -- maybe he realized revenge is a dish best served on a weekday -- Hammer has released a new dis track and accompanying video, “Better Run Run.” 

Now, we could make a million jokes about the not so smooth references to Hov -- there is a chunky male running through the woods in a white T-shirt, dark shades and, of course, a Yankees cap -– but we appreciate the irony of an irrelevant rapper-turned-preacher lambasting Jay for selling his soul to the devil (“I don’t Roc your wear,” is one of his clever rhymes as a dancer in a devil mask throws up the Roc sign).  He lectures the poor soul at the end of the clip, and then baptizes (or drowns) the fake Jay-Z (we’re not sure which).

Check out the video for yourself. Should Jay prep himself for the next great rap beef?

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy

twitter.com/GerrickKennedy

Credit: MC Hammer in the Cash4Gold commercial, saying he can get cash for his gold records. Credit: Euro RSCG Edge

The Grammy Awards went young -- and pop -- in 2010, awarding crossover teen star Taylor Swift the show's top crown -- album of the year. For such a seemingly wholesome and beloved artist, it was seen as a somewhat controversial pick.

The Grammys have typically skewed older -- Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Herbie Hancock, U2, etc. -- and rarely award an artist without a lengthy body of work. Unlike Norah Jones and Lauryn Hill, Swift's detailed tales of teenage life seemed aimed at a direct audience, and when she gave a wobbly vocal performance with Stevie Nicks, Team Swift was on the defensive. 

The Grammys can't win. Even when they gift its top prize to America's pop sweetheart, complaints pour in. But the Swift win did hint that Grammy voters are willing to go more mainstream than ever, and she competed in a field that also included the Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, the Dave Matthews Band and Beyoncé.

One could argue that such a field represented the genre-hopping tastes of the iPod generation, or one could note that the choices were almost stubbornly old school. Voters went with all major label artists, all major stars and carefully spread the picks amid pop, rock, country and R&B fields. A year for the unexpected it was not.

Whether the trend continues, or voters throw in a Radiohead, Hancock or White Stripes-like surprise, will be answered soon enough. Grammy ballots are due Nov. 3, and nominations will be revealed in early December. Before voters put down their pencils, here's a look at some of the likely nominations -- and perhaps some deserving ones. 

(This is Part 1. Stay tuned to Pop & Hiss for a continued look at album of the year front-runners.)

Eminem, "Recovery" (Aftermath/Interscope)

Grammy potential: Despite his sometimes penchant for shock-and-awe rap, Eminem has been one of the rare hip-hop artists to graphically explore violence and sex and still earn Grammy recognition in the major categories. Twice Eminem has been nominated for Grammy's top prize. Sales, of course, have helped his cause, and Eminem has a trail of critical accolades behind him. "Recovery" is seen as a more a serious turn than 2009's "Relapse," and little makes an artist more appealing to Grammy voters than getting older.

Grammy deserving: When Eminem released "Relapse," it was his first album of new material in five years, and it captured an artist who had become a cartoon. As rapid and clever as his rhymes were, the drugged-up serial killer shtick was just that, and its appeal was based on whether or not one could see it as humor or some sort of metaphor. "Recovery" is full of anger, but it's largely directed at Eminem himself. It's a moody, lacerating examination, and one that has sold close to 3 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The fact that it's perceived as a more thoughtful album than "Relapse" should make it Grammy bait. 

Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj were the king and queen of the 2010 BET Hip-Hop Awards, which were taped Saturday in Atlanta.

The heavyweight and the rookie, the latter of whom's debut album, “Pink Friday,” isn’t even in stores yet, were the big winners of the night, with each taking home three trophies.

Minaj, the colorful femcee on Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, won awards for rookie of the year, people’s champ and the style award called Made You Look -– an easy win given her brazen fashion sense and choice of vibrant wigs.

Jay-Z snagged wins in the perfect combo category (for his duet with Alicia Keys on “Empire State of Mind”), CD of the year for "The Blueprint 3" and best live performer.

Minaj wasn't the only woman who earned gold. Icons Salt-N-Pepa were honored with the I Am Hip-Hop award, a version of the lifetime achievement statue.

Other awards went to Swizz Beatz (producer of the year), Diddy (hustler of the year) and Rick Ross (club banger of the year and track of the year, both for “B.M.F. [Blowin’ Money Fast]”). Drake, who had his own breakout year, was named MVP of the year.

The telecast, the network's fifth, will be broadcast Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. on BET.

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy

twitter.com/gerrickkennedy

Photo: Nicki Minaj at the 2010 BET Hip-Hop Awards. Credit: Taylor Hill / Getty Images

Best Breakdown (Long-form): LCD Soundsystem, "Yeah."
It started with a propulsive four-on-the-floor beat with a saucing of trademark cowbell. Then came little synthesized squiggles, Exacto-sharp guitars and an assertive disco bass line. Then James Murphy started with the lyric that became Friday's insatiable anthem: "Yeah, yeah, yeah…." It seemed an invitation to every single person in earshot, from the band to fans to the beer vendors to nearby retirement homes, to drop whatever they were doing and throw down like the world was ending. Four days later, we're still singing along.

Worst gaffe by the soundboard: At last, a reunited Pavement returns to make up for its disastrous 1999 appearance and what happens to them? Several seconds of opening number "Silence Kit" is, well, absolutely silent due to some technical fumble or another. At least the band, which merrily carried on with their nostalgia fest, didn't seem to mind -- they've always liked being the underdogs.



Best Lighting: During the final moments of Little Boots' last song, a triumphant rendition of “Stuck On Repeat,” a frantic, pointed pulse of purple, green and yellow lasers fanned across the tent seemingly penetrating the forms of every dancing body they touched. The sheer amount of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation that Victoria Hesketh unleashed on the Gobi tent Sunday night was mind-blowing; three giant fans of red, white and blue beams refracted over every inch of the tent and made her already-giddy disco jams feel like a rave fantasia.

Best Portent: This year, we needed reminding that Coachella takes place in the desert. Past years, the temperature has typically climbed to the high '90s and low 100s, but 2010 was blessed with cool, dry weather that barely inched past 90. Hardly a misting station was in sight because no one really needed it, and the dance tents, even at their most jammed, weren't the usual unbearable pits of, um, eau du human fragrance. As a result, everyone seemed a lot more happy and chill. 



Best Competition for the Headliners: Whatever was going on at the outdoor stage. It's hard to figure out the weird science of what makes a good main stage act and what's better served by the smaller outdoor theater, but on more than a few occasions, it was clear that the bookers need to rejigger the algorithm. With massive audiences that kept piling up, Phoenix, Dead Weather and Thom Yorke's Atoms for Peace all belonged on the main stage.

As the first straight-up hip-hop headliner in Coachella's freewheeling, 11-year history, Jay-Z's set Friday night can be summed up in three words (with all due respect to Julius Caesar): veni vidi vici.

Young Jigga came, he saw and he conquered in the 11 p.m. time slot, performing for over an hour and serving up a veritable pupu platter of street bangers from across his hit-studded 15-year career and generally ripping his set as only a performer who has become the Great Black Hope of the summer music festival circuit -- top-lining here, at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, throughout Europe and Japan into next fall as no rapper has done before him -- could be expected to do. And although Jay-Z has an illustrious history of rock-rap collabos with the likes of Linkin Park and Coldplay's Chris Martin, the MC didn't water down the urban content or grittiness quotient for his low-desert constituency.

Rumors that Dr. Dre would make the trip down from L.A. for a guest performance of their reported duet "Under Pressure" proved unfounded. But Hova's wife, Beyonce, took the stage, subbing for Mr. Hudson on the song "Young Forever" and generally bringing an upped superstar quotient to the fest, closer in league to the Top 40 than Coachella's indie roots.

During the recording of “The Blueprint 3,” Jay-Z’s latest chart-topping full-length, the Brooklyn-born rapper gleaned something from frequent collaborator Kanye West: how to transform album tracks into arena-sized epics. In front of a sold-out Staples Center crowd on Friday night and backed by a 10-piece-band -- a three-member horn section, two guitarists, keyboardists and two drummers, along with backup emcee Memphis Bleek – the lyricist born Shawn Carter proved he could deliver a similar punch in a live setting. Drawing maximum response from the audience, he playfully asked them to throw their diamonds in the sky and repeatedly thanked them for their support.  He even sang “Happy Birthday” to a fan holding a “Birthday Girl” sign. 
 
Jay-Z, the hustler turned rapper turned brand name as big as the borough itself, owned the sold-out Staples Center. “This is Sinatra at the opera, bring a blond,” he rapped on “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune).” And if the spectacle wasn’t exactly Wagner’s “Ring Cycle,” at times it felt like an egalitarian equivalent. A wide demographic mix of the infamously fractionalized Los Angeles was drawn to the 40-year-old rapper who has almost single-handedly spawned the genre “classic rap.”
 
Many arrived dressed for a Friday night, as though they were gunning for a cameo on “Entourage.” Models clutching Gucci handbags stood among tabloid fodder, Chris Rock, Christina Aguilera, actors in Affliction tees tailed by Barbie blonds and B-boys in baggy pants. A duo donned outfits honoring the 15th anniversary of N.W.A. founder Eazy-E’s death (Compton caps and Eazy T-shirts) -- a milestone Jay-Z neglected to mention when he shouted out, “R.I.P. 2pac, the Notorious B.I.G., Big Pun, Big L and Pimp C,” following an electrifying a capella denouement to “Big Pimpin’.”
 
“I can sell ice in the winter, I can sell fire in hell. I’m a hustler.”

Although he has boasted of his entrepreneurial beginnings on the street earning seed money by “flipping a record company from a half a [kilo],” Jay-Z’s renegade independent days are in the past. “I used to duck shots/but now I eat quail/I’ll probably never see jail,” he raps on "Real as It Gets." He’s the mega-star who two years ago inked a reported $150-million partnership with Live Nation Entertainment to advance his Jay-Z brand.

Atlanta rapper-actor Ludacris is back atop the national sales chart with his latest, “Battle of the Sexes,” his third No. 1 album and the first rap collection to make it to the top since Jay-Z’s “Blueprint” logged two weeks there in September.

It’s a rebound of sorts for the rhymer born Christopher Bridges, after his 2008 album, “Theater of the Mind,” made it only as high as No. 5. “Battle of the Sexes” had first-week sales of 137,000 copies, putting it just ahead of the new Gorillaz effort, “Plastic Beach,” opening at No. 2 on sales of 112,000 copies.

In a strong week for new releases, with five debuting in the Top 10, the posthumous Jimi Hendrix collection “Valleys of Neptune” enters the chart at No. 4, on sales of 95,000 copies. That’s one notch higher than the peak position of his landmark 1967 debut album, “Are You Experienced?,” and right behind 1968’s “Axis: Bold as Love” and 1971’s “The Cry of Love,” both of which peaked at No. 3. The rock guitar hero scored his only No. 1 album in 1968 with “Electric Ladyland.”

The other new entries to the chart this week are from Southland-reared country singer Gary Allan, who debuts at No. 5 on sales of 65,000 copies of “Get Off the Pain,” and  Broken Bells, the new group featuring producer Danger Mouse and Shins singer James Mercer. Their collaboration, also called “Broken Bells,” starts out at No. 7 with sales of 49,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Ludacris. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

See the full lineup below...

The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival will bring a youth movement to the low desert this year. After several years of graybeard headliners, California’s signature festival is going back to the future with younger acts including Gorillaz, Muse, Jay-Z, Thom Yorke, MGMT, Hot Chip, Spoon, Vampire Weekend and LCD Soundsystem at the very top of the bill for the three-day concert that begins April 16 at the Empire Polo Field in Indio.

There are some flashback acts, including Woodstock icon Sly Stone and the Family Stone, 1980s alt-rock group Echo and the Bunnymen and reconstituted college-rock outfit Pavement, but they're not leading the bill as Paul McCartney, Prince and Roger Waters did in past years.

The presence of rap superstar Jay-Z will raise the eyebrows of those fans who like to think of Coachella as an indie oasis on today’s live-music landscape; hip-hop stars such as Kanye West, the Beastie Boys, Lupe Fiasco and Kool Keith have performed at Coachella in the past but none of them tap into the same street imagery and conspicuous consumption ethos that defines the $150-million mogul.

Jay-Z is also a somewhat unexpected booking because he has a performance -- for which tickets are still available -- at the Staples Center on March 26. The hip-hop star will close out the opening night of the fest on Friday, when other performers will be LCD Soundsystem, rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Specials and John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols experimental outfit Public Image Ltd. 

Saturday night will be headlined by Muse, Faith No More, DJs Tiesto and David Guetta, MGMT, Hot Chip and Jack White's The Dead Weather. Sunday will close with Gorillaz, Yorke, Spoon, Parisian electronic rockers Phoenix and dance veterans Orbital.

The desert event has won a reputation among fans for showcasing artists on the comeback trail, and rock acts such as the Pixies and Iggy & the Stooges made splashy returns at Coachella. Pavement, a staple of the '90s alt-rock scene, has been an expected Coachella headliner since announcing its reunion at the end of 2009.

Here's hoping you're not yet tired of "Empire State of Mind." The Times' Geraldine Baum writes in this Sunday's Calendar that the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys hit appears to be ready to stand the test of time.

The question Baum raises: "Can any hip-hop song prove as universal and enduring as Duke Ellington's 'Take the A Train' (written by Billy Strayhorn) or Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's 'Manhattan'? Or, for that matter, that other easy-to-whistle 'New York, New York,' by Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which explains, 'the Bronx is up and the Battery down, the people ride in a hole in the ground'?"

You'll have to read the story to explore the varying answers to the question, but Pop & Hiss is here to give you the music. Take a listen to some of the songs explored in Baum's piece -- or just revisit your favorite East Coast anthem -- below. 

 
The last 12 months are likely to be remembered for their eclectic cultural sweep -- as the year Tiger Woods was sucked into a vortex of groupie hell, Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme came tumbling down and “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” became a legitimate dinner party talking point. But at street level, ’09 will go down in the annals for something else entirely. It was the year hip-hop finally plunged face-first into full-blown alcoholism.

We’re not talking about “You can find me in the club / bottles full of bubb” -- or any of that namby-pamby, bling-era conspicuous consumption (Jay-Z, as well as every other MC to rhyme “Cristal” with “pistol,” please pay your waitress and leave). Mainstream rap went giddy, downright hiccuping drunk, glorifying alcohol consumption. This year, the pop charts were awash with MCs and R&B crooners extolling the virtues of chasing a buzz and winding up wasted -- hopefully with some kind of sexual conquest to offset the bar bill.

Somewhere, Charles Bukowski and Dylan Thomas are probably tuning in to Power 106 FM. Meanwhile,  auto-tune savant T-Pain and Crunk’s capo di tutti capos, Lil Jon, emerged as this year’s preeminent champions of booze-sozzled hip-hop. So herewith, the top 9 (as in '09) most alcoholic-enabling hip-hop songs of the year.

Staples Center

Weezer, Jan. 11 (Sat.)

The rap superstar is generous with sharing the spotlight -- OMG, was that Rihanna? -- in a show that also included sets by N.E.R.D., J.Cole and Wale.

It's not easy to upstage Jay-Z, especially at his own show. But during a performance Sunday at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, one special guest managed to do just that -- and it wasn't the rap superstar's wife, Beyoncé.

Not quite midway through the show, Rihanna, draped in black and standing on an elevated riser, emerged from underneath the stage to sing her vocal on Jay-Z's summer hit, "Run This Town," from his 11th studio album, “The Blueprint 3.”

Young women in the audience jumped onto their chairs, camera phones in hand, for a better glimpse, their screams ringing out in near unison over the arena. One fan nearby turned to her friend and screamed, "Oh my God, is that really her?"

It was the first time the pop star had performed since breaking her nearly nine month silence last week about being assaulted by former boyfriend Chris Brown in February.