Comedy and Scotland Editor James Macfarlane sits down with MC Hammersmith to discuss raps, rhymes and his new Edinburgh show Straight Outta Brompton.
My online bullies on TikTok keep saying I look like Eminem if he went to Hogwarts
MC Hammersmith! How are you?
I’m good. I just got back from doing some comedy rap shows in Zurich. Do you know what Swiss people don’t do? Laugh. Very reserved people. I wore them down in the end - like my uncle always used to say to me, scream as loudly as you can, they’ll emerge from their shells eventually. He bred turtles for a living. Nice man, lots of anger issues.
So, for those of us who’ve never seen an MC Hammersmith show, can you tell us what we can expect?
I perform improvised hip hop comedy based entirely on audience suggestions. This year’s show features some brand new routines, and incorporates live-looping, auto-tuning, and gyrating of a sexual nature (only in one song though, calm down).
Also, feels worth mentioning, I’m a posh privately-educated man from Hammersmith in west London. I’ve got dark hair and glasses. My online bullies on TikTok keep saying I look like Eminem if he went to Hogwarts. So there’s the visual aspect you can also expect.
It seems difficult enough to be given random topics by the audiences and make a coherent rap out of them, but to then make the rap consistently funny is even harder. When did you discover you had the ability to combine the rhymes with the comedy?
I’d love to toot my own horn (calm down), but if we’re being pedantic, I never discovered I had an innate ability for freestyle rapping. When I started I was complete dogshit. But I had already been doing improv for 10 years when I realised I could combine my love of hip hop with improvised comedy. It took years of practice: psychopathically memorising rhyming words in my bedroom like a dweeb.
Plus, I wasn’t funny to begin with. I think the skill was impressive, but not at all comedic. But then you realise you’re performing at a comedy club, stood in front of the word “COMEDY” in big letters, so that was a big kick up the arse to learn how to quickly set up and land punchlines in rhyme. Like my uncle always used to say to me - aquaculture is a dying trade.
How long before you were confident enough in your abilities that you decided to become a performer?
Quite honestly, my upbringing in a rich and entirely white male environment imbued me with a huge amount of misplaced confidence. Especially having done improv for ages, I thought it would be pretty easy to transfer these skills to a solo environment.
Then I did my third ever gig at a working men’s club in Paisley, and it absolutely shattered my confidence. It brought me down to the humbling reality of how difficult comedy is, and how comedy is a craft you have to actually work hard at to master.
I’m grateful to have been humbled by the experience, because any creative success is built on a platform of hundreds of failures. Though I wish someone had told me that before those men in Paisley kept heckling “briefcase wanker” at me.
Is your freestyle rapping something that has to be constantly practiced or is it a skill that is engrained in your mind and you can just create a rap whenever.
Constant, unending practice. I still try and do 30 minutes a day. I practiced for two solid years before I ever got onstage with it. I firmly believe anyone can do it if they put the hours in, as with any creative skill. Like my uncle always used to say to me - you need an area of soft soil surrounded by rocks and logs so the female feels secure enough to lay and hide her eggs.
Has there ever been a time where audience members have tried to trip you up? Maybe given you a word or phrase that’s difficult to rhyme? What happens in those situations?
Oh god, all the time. The top three words people shout out are “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, “antidisestablishmentarianism”, and “onomatopoeia”. People think they’re being hilarious and clever, but they’re actually being extremely predictable, so I’ve obviously banked multiple rhymes for all of these suggestions.
Having said that, sometimes people do fling a left-field one at me. Someone last week suggested “deoxyribonucleic acid”, which is the full name for DNA. I’m at the stage of freestyle rapping where I can basically bend syllables to fold a tenuous half rhyme around any set-up, so that doesn’t particularly throw me. It’s making it funny which is the challenging part. That’s the fun chaos I enjoy.
It’s been lovely to talk to you, best of luck with the run!
Do you want to buy some turtle meat?
MC Hammersmith new show ‘Straight Outta Brompton’ is at the Monkey Barrel 1 at 12.30pm (lunchtime) from 2nd – 27th August (not 8th, 15th, 22nd) for tickets go to www.edfringe.com
