How Hammer lost million$$$$ - and his comeback plans - rap singer

Ebony, August, 1997 by Laura B. Randolph

It is easy now, with enough time elapsed, to soft out what went wrong. Yes, Hammer says, in hindsight, he can see clearly all of the reasons for his financial fall. He understands exactly, precisely how he went from being one of the richest entertainers in the world to one of the more than 1 million Americans who filed for bankruptcy last year.

Contrary to popular belief, says Hammer, his bankruptcy isn't about his much-publicized former lifestyle--the 40-person entourage, the fleet of cars, the stable of racehorses. It isn't even about the multimillion-dollar mansion he had built, and is now selling, just outside of Oakland. None of those things, says the Grammy Award-winning artist, are what forced him to file Chapter 11 on April Fools' Day last year, claiming assets of $9.6 million and debts of $13.7 million. The bare-faced truth, says Hammer, is this: What forced him to file bankruptcy is not about the things he bought. It is about the things he did.

"My priorities were out of order," he says candidly. "My priorities should have always been God, family, community and then business." Instead, he says, they became "business, business and business."

To the exclusion of almost everything else, Hammer says he became absorbed in every aspect of the creative side of his career, leaving the money management to others. Truth be told, he paid little, if any, attention to how the money was being spent or who was spending it.

He says all this without a trace of bitterness, with the calm of a man who has seen and done it all; a man who understands his mistakes and is still young enough to correct them; a man who has come full circle and, in the process, has grown smart and sanguine and spiritual enough to take the distanced view.

Here, in a nutshell, is what happened. At least on some subconscious level, Hammer says he began to give himself the credit for much, if not most, of what he was doing for his people and his community. And in fairness, he was doing a lot. At the height of his career, Hammer employed 200 Black people, many of them young men from his old neighborhood whom he had rescued from the life of the street. And he paid dearly to do it; every month, he met a half-a-million-dollar payroll. But somewhere along the way, Hammer became confused about who was making everything possible. "God wants all his glory," he says quietly, "and I shortchanged Him."

That's when things started to go wrong, as they always will when, as he puts it, "one becomes more spiritually lifted up in themselves." And it happened so gradually, so subtly, without him even being aware of it. "Even if you don't say it, you can think: `See all that I'm doing? I'm helping the community.' When you are not committed spiritually, you can become lifted up in yourself even though you don't think so. Like me. I would say, `How am I lifted up [in myself] when I have 200 people I give money to every week when I don't need but 20 of them?' So I know we're not talking about me. But yes, I was. Because the fact that I was doing these things gave me a certain amount of satisfaction where I really should have been saying: `Lord, I thank you for making me able to do this for the people.... Let me be the vehicle and not try to be the gift and the giver."

There's more. In the years that led up to his bankruptcy, Hammer says not only was he failing to give God all the glory, not only was he letting others handle the money, "I wasn't living the type of life you're supposed to live and striving to be Christlike." About the type of life he was living, Hammer will only say this: "When I wasn't close to God, I was as deep in the world as you could be. You will never know how deep in the world I was."

He remembers vividly the day he hit rock bottom. He had just left his attorney's office, where they had reviewed the state of his finances. "I got in my truck," he recalls, "and I was going down the road and I had to pull over. I was overcome with grief. I said, `I can't believe I let this happen.' I took full responsibility for it. And at that moment, I got set free because prior to that I blamed everybody else--my business team, my manager, my brother."

Surprisingly, losing his fortune has not been what has hurt Hammer the most. On the contrary, he is convinced that "a lot of things I ended up going through were for my benefit." Specifically, he believes he needed to go through this fire to prepare him for what he calls "the second leg of my career." A career he is certain will be bigger and better than the first. And just what makes him so certain? "God is sincere about his promises," he answers. "He promised me restoration, and it is already basically done."

His bankruptcy has yielded another, even more precious, benefit, Hammer says. One that money can't buy: It gave him time--three and a half years away from the music business, which he spent reconnecting with his family. "I've been to the top of the mountain and I've seen everything life has to offer in terms of finance," says Hammer, who has been married for 12 years to Stephanie Burrell, whom he met at a church revival meeting and wed six months later. "Based on what I've seen, I understand that the most precious things in life are those intimate moments with your kids. When my son runs and jumps on me in the bed, you can't replace that. Going to the movies with my daughters and watching them laugh feels better than 50,000 people at the Tokyo Dome. It's not even a comparison."