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Who are some of your favourite people/celebrities you follow on twitter?

Tyreese is at the top of my list, Solange Knowles, Erykah Badu, yeah.

What do you think makes someone interesting to follow, as someone who has millions of followers themselves?

Um, so I like to see people’s thoughts, and I’m a studier of language, language to the extent of subliminal, body, speech barrier, I like, you know, the vibe of language so when I see your tweet you can’t hide it from me. So even if you want to right, if you see enough of a person’s tweets you find out what their interests are, right? And if you keep on whatever you find out, you know, you might have a nice conversation when you talk to em this way, but if you watch their tweets you see that they’re a different person. So, I find all that in tweeting. You study “human behaviour” in tweeting. 

Do you think that scares some record labels ‘cause they want to kind of censor what an act says and control the public’s perception of them and then they’ve got this young kid, young rapper just saying whatever they want. Do you think that scares people in the industry?

Yeah yeah, its not just rappers, RnB, pop singers, all of em. The down side is that the people get to see the real you so there’s no more creating your image and pretending like you’re somebody else, so, you got this, balladeer who sings these beautiful love songs right, and you’ve got this great image of him until you see his twitter feed, and he’s not even romantic! Not even close to romantic, right. So that’s the down side, that the image that the labels have crafted for the artist doesn’t match who he or she really is, and with social media the real deal comes out, and that’s the down side.

Well, it’s the good side for the viewer I guess?

The good side is transparency, or just being yourself, or being who you want to be, right? So, all that is part as far as the social networking atmosphere, yeah.

Have you had any weird fans, or stalker behaviour on twitter?

I started off establishing rules and guidelines of my relationship with followers very early on, it’s like, I’ll block you quickly. If you are a negative person, you don’t wanna follow Hammer. You won’t last but a day or two and that’s it. I’ll block you. It’s a weird time right in life, on this entire planet, where if we continue to allow the negative people to dominate the impulses of the world we’re gonna be in really bad shit, cause we’re already facing all these other challenges on a global basis, the global economy is in trouble which affects everyone, you know you have wars spread out, then you have viruses and disease, then you have some guys who want to talk negative everyday. So you’re trying to make them give up. If you allow that type of language and behaviour in your world on a daily basis it is slowly eating you away and you are dying, you’re dying spiritually, you’re dying mentally, and finally you’re dying physically, cause you’re allowing that door to open the stress, oppression depression to come in, so I block you. Ha, I say, man you are blocked and you can’t come back. 

I’ll wake up and tweet out that I’m just glad to wake up, I’m just thankful to be here. So anyway, that’s kind of how I establish the culture of Hammer, it’s about being doers, executers, thinkers, compassionate, love, family, vision, making money, its all part of the culture of Hammer.

I was looking at your blog the other day and I saw you’ve got that 50 Cent video up where he’s talking about business, and I was wondering how you feel about, particularly in the rap industry, so much of what rappers do is now tied in with industries that are not music related. What do you think about that, why do you think that is?

Well, the skills that are necessary for a rapper to be successful is very equivalent to an entrepreneur. Rappers have better entrepreneur instincts than any other genre of music because we have to, from the beginning, be very entrepreneurial to getting going, to really get it going in the way we have to do it in hip-hop. So, when opportunities present themselves, for a rapper, as an entrepreneur he sees it, quickly, and seizes it, because it’s part of his demeanour, it’s the way he thinks, he thinks entrepreneurial. I think it’s very important that hip-hop and rappers try and get every opportunity that’s presented to them that fits. 

Another thing I’ve noticed is that it seems like rap music has come full circle since your day, there was an emphasis on gangster rap for a while but now it seems to have come back to showmanship, and crossover pop/hip-hop, like Kanye West and Kid Cudi and Drake. Given that you’ve seen it all before, why do you think it’s popular again?

It’s a sign of the times, again, if the world is negative who wants to hear another negative song? I believe music should be an escapism, to take you away. That’s what I really emphasise on my new album. When you put on my album get ready to go somewhere! You don’t stay here, you know, listening to my music, it’s not meant for that, especially right now. It’s meant for you to have a ride, to close our eyes and go somewhere when you’re listening to the music. 

One of the songs, called Obey Me, the idea is that when you’re hearing this song, places you haven’t gone, like a lot of people haven’t come to Australia, I’m saying these places should be in your dreams. Winnipeg, and Virginia. I talk about these places because I think to the right music they hit your subconscious and you feel good. You go somewhere when driving your car listening to this music and I think that’s good, you know. So I think that any song that’s telling me about my immediate surroundings, which I’m very familiar with every time I walk out the door, it’s not for me. You have to remind me of my neighbourhood? Give me another song, give me some more thoughts, give me some other things.

I think that’s what has kinda stunted Aussie hip-hop, it’s hard to get off the ground because listeners don’t want to hear about their own suburb, we live it, we want some escapism…

Yeah that’s the idea behind my new album DanceJamTheMusic, I got a song that’s meant to take you to Studio 54 back in 1978, it’s that type of groove. Like when Michael Jackson’s ‘Off the Wall’ was out, this song would fit on that album.

Can you tell us more about Dancejam.com, I’ve seen it’s on your website and on Twitter?

Yeah I just sold it. But the idea was that there needed to be a place where people who love the culture of dance, everything about dance, can go and exchange ideas and see dance and learn dance and compete in dance, and that’s why I built it. I was very happy with the user interfaces, it’s nice. So I think it’s a beautiful thing. If I think on my mind, I want to do it I believe I can do it. So, I want to create this place, this destination for the culture of dance, I put together all the pieces, and thank God I did, it’s there. That’s what Dancejam is all about. 

Some critics say that sites like Twitter are really just giving people who already have power in the media more reach, rather than giving a voice to people that maybe should have influence but aren’t famous?  

Sure, but what they don’t understand is that celebrities don’t control the flow of information. So, it’s like, I did a sound bite for Britney today, this thing that was in the paper today. She doesn’t control it; this is a perfect example. Britney didn’t write whatever they wrote about her today (Ed: Australian critics have been dissing Britney Spears’ recent tour because of her lip-syncing), somebody chose, they went to her concert. We already know what her show is; she’s been doing it for ten years, we already know what she does when she does a show, it’s very entertaining, and a lot of us like it, me included. So you get up, you wake up this morning and you decide you want to go to Britney’s show and you want to write this article, you didn’t discover anything, you already knew this. So, her celebrity does not give her the power to control the flow of information. She did not write that article. So, I would say that the fact that she has two-point-something million followers on Twitter but, you know, she hasn’t been doing her own tweeting and she openly says that, now’s the time for her to start to tweet for herself, or at least have her people tweet out the following: “My show is sweat, tears and hard work. I have to dance from the time it starts til it’s over. I may not sing every note of my show, but my heart is into every song, and I do my best. It’s very difficult to sing when you’re running fast and spinning around and jumping six feet in the air and keep perfect pitch, and I think that you’ll want to really enjoy the songs and sometimes I just want to make sure the song is right. Love Britney” (claps) be done with it! See? Be done with it.

But that’s more than 140 characters...

Break it into two tweets! Send it out and all of a sudden three million people got her side of the story. Take control of your story! The power doesn’t have to be with the non-known person because unknown people are not necessarily trustworthy either. It needs to be spread out across the community. Celebrities and non-celebrities. Journalists and non-journalists. Citizen journalism versus professional journalism, right? Water cooler talk versus, you know, open talk. All of it should be there, it’s part of the entire ecosystem. So that’s what I say.

For more wisdom from Hammer follow him on Twitter.