'Hammertime' fails to nail a new angle

"I'm ashamed to say this, but I wasn't thinking very highly of you," the man tells MC Hammer. "But when I heard you speak, you know what you're talking about." The location is a Stanford panel on the music industry in the digital age, on which Hammer had just been a speaker. Hammer glad-hands the guy, tells him he's happy not just to have respect but to have earned it.

It's a small scene in the second episode of "Hammertime," which premieres tonight on A&E (10 p.m.) with a pair of shows, but it is far and away the most revealing moment on this anodyne series. Here is a man who's sold millions of records, survived serious financial tumult and stands as one of hip-hop's most indelible figures (if no longer a popular one) being reduced to caricature by someone whose mask of open-mindedness conceals, just barely, persistent casual racism.

"When life hits hard, Hammer hits back," screams the tag line for this show, a serial documentary about the rapper-entrepreneur's family life. But apart from awkward encounters like the above, the life depicted on "Hammertime" doesn't seem to be hitting that hard. Instead, it's one in a line of celebrity-family slice-of-life shows driven by conflict that's clearly contrived, if that, and homespun wisdom one wouldn't wish to hear from one's own relatives. It's a testament to the narcotizing qualities of family life.

Born Stanley Burrell, Hammer has been married to his wife, Stephanie, for more than 20 years. They have five children: A'Keiba, Sarah, Stanley Jr., Jeremiah and Samuel. (Hammer's nephew Jamaris also lives with the family.) Now he runs a website, DanceJam.com, and records occasionally but may be best known on Twitter, where he has a shockingly high number of followers: 766,623 at this writing, placing him in the Top 30 of all users. (On the show, Twitter "updates" scroll across the screen to indicate changes in action -- a dim gimmick, especially when Hammer is fake-typing.)

Still, Hammer matters because of "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em," the 1990 album that was the first hip-hop record to sell 10 million copies and was promoted by the flashy videos that made harem pants an object of interest and, ultimately, scorn. It was an epic success that was followed by a glorious financial flameout. Hammer became an early symbol of the genre's excess, for better and worse.