The Miracle of "Pumps and a Bump"

While lying in bed this morning pondering the reality of miracles I began to think about the first concert I’d ever attended. It was MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice at the Coliseum in Madison, WI. I went with my close friend and catholic elementary school classmate Claudia Achumpung. I remember preparing for the concert in her living room, practicing dance moves while listening to a MC Hammer record. During this lesson I kept wildly waving my arms above my head, in my mind a natural accompaniment to gyrating my hips and rapidly moving my feet, while my close friends Claudia and her older sister Joann, saw it was an un-rhythmic indication of whiteness. Both Joann and Claudia had been born in Ghana and were first generation Black Americans. I can only assume they had spent the better part of their young lives studying Black American culture as a means to fit in, and what I was doing certainly did not fit.

None the less, this morning I was struck by Hammer’s song “Pumps and a Bump” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNz225f1230), in the mid nineties this song was very popular and may have pulled Hammer out of server debt. What I find amazing about “Pumps and a Bump” is how terrible the song was then, yet each generation of self proclaimed hip-hop intellectuals shakes their heads in disgust at the sad state of hip-hop. Like it was so different back in the day. There was garbage Hip-Hop in the nineties and there will be more garbage Hip-Hop to come. Remember “Me so Horney” or “Dazy Dukes”, “Do you Qualify” by Domino? Clearly the mind remembers and celebrates the good instead of the bad.

Yet this is not the connection I was drawing to miracles. The first concert I ever attended was not Hammer but instead an R&B concert with my dad and step mom. All I can remember is that Morris Day and the Time were supposed to be there and they never showed up. I was maybe 7 years old and really pissed. I had a huge crush on Morris Day. I loved his vanity, theatrics, hair, and suits. He was the bad guy with a sense of humor, sexy (to a seven year old) witty and my future husband. In my mind we had connected. Fifteen years later I met Morris Day in a small club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There he was, sitting in the VIP section, looking slightly older but still vain, with perfect hair. I had a few drinks, so I sat next to him and immediately professed the love I had cultivated for him as a seven year old girl. Considering his career was at it’s end and he was close to sixty, he was flattered. We hugged, he gave me his number and we parted ways never to see each other again.

The moral of the story, believe in the impossible. It might not be what you envisioned but after a few drinks it really doesn’t matter, cause ten years down the road you're more likely to remember Dre’s the “The Chronic” then Paperboy’s “The Nine Yards” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROVkXEBeQWE).