MC Hammer - Halloween 2016

MC Hammer (center) flanked by Britney Spears (L) and Mary Poppins (R).

I've been throwing Halloween parties for several years now, because I love Halloween. Each year it's a challenge figuring out what my costume should be, as it is for many people. For most of my parties, I've had a theme. Themes have ranged from "Tim Burton Movies" to "Space", from "Animated Disney Characters" to "2012: End of the World".

For 2016, the theme was "Music". We had hoped this theme would be easy for most people, and for the most part, people came through and came up with some amazing costumes! The 2016 Best Overall costume went to our friend, Becca, for her "Amy Winehouse" costume. From the hair to the costume, it was perfect.

As always, it was a challenge for me to pick a costume. This theme was particularly challenging because it was hard to find a musician with a practical costume and a musician that was recognizable on me. I thought of David Bowie, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Prince and so on. Ultimately I landed on MC Hammer! I was worried with the challenge of MC Hammer being African-American and pulling off the look without offending anyone! I decided to shave the lines in my hair and paint my hair black. That, with the addition of the glasses achieved the look I wanted. Not to mention the jacket and pants.

My 2016 MC Hammer Costume.

Something I hate to do is buy whole costume parts, I like to make them. But for MC Hammer I decided to buy the pants. I'm not the best at pants anyway. The jacket however, I based on the few clear pictures and video I could find of it. MC Hammer's own music video on YouTube is very blurry, and there really aren't any quality/complete images out there. So I stumbled across John Legend's performance as MC Hammer on Lip Sync Battle. There are some very clear images and video available on that so I based mine on that. I then got what I needed for the jacket and whipped it up in an evening!

The costume came together with some plastic chains, black TOM's, the glasses and hair.

-The Media Buff