MC Hammersmith: The MC Stands for Middle Class

Edinburgh Fringe – Monkey Barrel

MC Hammersmith’s The MC Stands for Middle Class is just about as good as it gets in terms of improvisation, music and comedy. It’s difficult to go back to listening just rap after this show, because what MC Hammersmith does is a lot more impressive than anything out there. Even Hamilton appears less ground-breaking after seeing this show. 

This show isn’t just one thing, it’s built from multiple parts. It’s a comedy show that we can enjoy for the escape, but there’s also a really challenging musical element to it as well. The entire thing is incredibly impressive from a musical, intellectual and a comedy perspective. MC Hammersmith is pretty much a triple-threat; not only does he have to improvise, but he’s also rhyming, what he’s saying has to be on topic and make sense (he’s yes and-ing himself) which requires some encyclopaedic-level of background knowledge whilst he’s keeping a beat, a rhythm that is constantly deviating as the rap progresses. And that’s before getting into his vocal stamina to be able to complete these lengthy pieces of music without a break. His technical skill is absolutely incredible. 

“MC Hammersmith pulls off basically a Herculean feat of music and improvisation that is unmatched and outpaces anything else that is out there.”

There’s a series of gimmicks that add some structure to the show where MC Hammersmith freestyles and completes challenges based on suggestions from the audience that are as random as they get, in addition to just from cold-reading audience members in the moment, forming these extensive rap numbers based on very little. Even though the show itself seems quite prescriptive, it is unreasonable to expect anything else considering just how impressive what MC Hammersmith achieves in the first place is.

This is one of those shows where we leave asking how he does it, it’s hard to imagine that someone can achieve what he achieves off the cuff. MC Hammersmith pulls off basically a Herculean feat of music and improvisation that is unmatched and outpaces anything else that is out there. 

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

Photo Credit: Laurence Winram