A review of MC Hammersmith: Ice Ice Nepo Baby, Fringe 2026

Improvisation is daunting enough on its own, but crowd work while freestyle rapping feels like another level entirely… I was absolutely thrilled to see it happening in front of me. 

How does his brain even work? 

One of the first impressive moments of the show was MC Hammersmith doing a completely improvised rap using a series of words suggested by the audience. It was very funny, and I was just sitting there wondering how someone’s brain can retrieve words, rhymes and jokes that quickly without visibly catching fire. 

Later, he picked a few people from the audience, asked them questions about their lives and then basically turned each person’s story into an improvised rap. 

I also really appreciated the way he handled audience participation. He explicitly said he would mostly involve people who were making eye contact with him, which felt unusually considerate. Not everyone wants to become an active part of a show. Some of us (me!) are stage shy, so I was very relieved that I could enjoy the crowd work without spending the whole hour terrified of being picked. 

Boggle, but make it rap 

MC Hammersmith is clearly a massive nerd, which became particularly obvious when he somehow turned a game of Boggle into a freestyle exercise. 

The audience helped generate a grid of letters and he then had to find words from it while improvising a rap. It was the nerdiest and most impressive thing I’ve ever seen. 

This was probably the point where I stopped trying to understand how he was doing what he was doing. 

The linguistic skill throughout the freestyle sections was incredible. The speed at which he could process audience input, construct rhymes and still make the result actually funny was easily the strongest part of the show for me. 

The nepo baby mystery 

The freestyle sections were interspersed with more traditional comedy built around the mystery of MC Hammersmith’s biological parents.

His adopted family joined the investigation: naturally, his parents are MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, with Snoop Dogg as his godfather. Unfortunately they did not make it to Edinburgh in person, but they did ‘appear’ via video call. 

I thought bringing the adoptive parents into the show this way was a really fun idea, and the ridiculous family mythology fits the whole Ice Ice Nepo Baby concept very well. 

That said, this side of the show felt a little less developed than the freestyle sections. I think the calls and the broader storyline could use a bit more polish…either becoming even more chaotic and audience-driven to match the energy of the improvised rap, or going in the opposite direction and developing into something more elaborate and tightly written. 

At the moment, the improvised sections are so strong that the scripted comedy sometimes feels like it is trying to catch up with them. 

A smoky side note 

One practical caveat for anyone with asthma: the room was quite smoky throughout the performance. Two large smoke machines seemed to be running for most of the show, and I ended up managing asthma symptoms for a good part of it. 

I suspect I wasn’t the only one, since when MC Hammersmith started rapping about random objects held up by the audience a couple of inhalers appeared in people’s hands. 

So, asthmatic friends: remember to bring your inhalers! 

Despite that, I had a great time. The freestyle sections alone were worth seeing, because they were very funny and because watching someone perform that kind of verbal acrobatics live is just fascinating.