Alabama Principal Masterfully Turns ‘U Can’t Touch This’ Into Everyone’s Favorite New Coronavirus Awareness Bop

An Alabama high school principal created a funny video with a serious message and it has gone viral for both reasons.

Dr. Quentin Lee, principal at Childersburg High School, transformed MC Hammer’s 1990 classic “U Can’t Touch This” into a coronavirus awareness campaign in the hopes of encouraging students to stay safe and healthy as the school year begins.

Lee wrote the rap parody himself and includes clever lyrics like, “I told you students/ You better pull that mask up!/ It’s the CDC, not me!” and “Let’s all be safe go wash your hands/ So move, back up 6 ft. You better not cough and you better not sneeze/ Sanitation! Hold on, lemme check your temp not under your arm.” The principal told Alabama News Center that he wrote the lyrics in just 15 minutes. He then called film director Jaylen Mitchell of City Vizualz to record it, recruiting student and teacher volunteers for the video.

The result is an entertaining video that features Lee dancing his way around the high school, sanitizing a classroom, popping up from behind a vending machine to spray it down, and doing a Hammer dance to remind students about proper social distancing and to put their masks on. He stops to blurt out, “Stop! Sanitize!” to the tune of “Stop! Hammer Time!”

MC Hammer himself weighed in to give his seal of approval to the endeavor:

While it’s a funny video, the school knows returning to school in the middle of a pandemic is a critical issue. “We take COVID-19 very seriously but wanted to bring some comic relief to a tough situation,” the high school said in a statement on its website. “We can’t wait to have our students back on campus.”

This isn’t the first time the principal has tried to express his feelings about the pandemic in song. “Doing silly stuff is something I really enjoy,” Lee told Alabama News Center. In a video released in April, he shared another song he wrote “that lets you know how [he has] been feeling in this COVID pandemic.” He begins playing music on a keyboard and promptly begins screaming.