This song is about women with big butts, and the men who love them. Mix-a-Lot got the idea when he was watching the Super Bowl on TV. A Budweiser beer commercial came on with models who were way too skinny for his taste.
In the October 28, 2016 edition of the Tacoma Weekly, Sir Mix-A-Lot talked about the deeper meaning behind this song. "It was a lot more serious than a lot of people thought it was," he said. "The song is really talking about the lack of acceptance by Hollywood of the African-American body. I'm talking Serena Williams kind of curves. Back in that era, what they did with women of color was they either played prostitutes or maids. They were usually seriously overweight. They picked the worst example they could find cosmetically, and they'd throw that in front of us. I wanted to talk about it, and that's what 'Baby Got Back' is really about. Now, because the body is not only accepted, it's expected, I'm not sure that the song would make the same impact it did in '92."
"Baby Got Back" started a trend of rap "booty" songs. Wreckx-N-Effect had a hit soon after with "
Rump Shaker," and rappers have been singing the praises of "the bubble" ever since.
The video was directed by Adam Bernstein, who also did "
Hey Ladies" for Beastie Boys and "
Love Shack" for The B-52s - if you wanted a video filled with irreverent fun around this time, he was your man.
According to Bernstein, casting the video was one of the strangest experiences of his professional life. Since it was the butts they were interested in, he and his crew took photos of the applicants' fundaments, which they sent to Sir Mix-A-Lot for evaluation.
The outrageous video was briefly banned by MTV. This added to the song's popularity, as Mix-a-Lot played up the controversy. Years later, many rap videos featured dancers with big, healthy butts. The dancers in modern hip-hop videos usually have bigger rumps than those in "Baby Got Back," since in 1992, it was a lot harder to find models with a juicy bubble.
This song opens with a Valley Girl disparaging a Black woman with a big butt. It was the first successful Valley Girl integration since the Frank Zappa song "
Valley Girl."
"Baby Got Back" made Sir Mix-a-Lot a household name, but he was already well known in the rap community and really big in the Pacific Northwest (he's from Seattle). His first album,
Swass, was released in 1988 and went Platinum, with the single "
Posse On Broadway" charting at #70. "Baby Got Back" was released on his third album,
Mack Daddy, in February 1992 and hit #1 on the 4th of July, staying at the top for five weeks before it was dislodged by the dirge-like Madonna song "
This Used To Be My Playground."
Mix-a-Lot explored pimp culture on his next album,
Chief Boot Knocka in 1994, but there wasn't much demand. He put out another album in 1996 but faded from view. By this time, "Baby Got Back" was earning him lots of passive income, so he didn't have to worry about money. He never had another hit, but is credited as a writer on the 2005 Pussycat Dolls hit "
Don't Cha," which samples his 1988 song "
Swass."
Speaking with TMZ in 2014, Sir Mix-A-Lot said that Jennifer Lopez was an inspiration for the song, particularly during her time on
In Living Color as one of the show's Fly Girl dancers. The song makes an appearance in her 2003 movie
Gigli, a notorious flop.
You'll have no trouble finding skinny girls dancing to "Baby Got Back" in a carefree, often ironic way. The most famous example is Cameron Diaz, who shakes what booty she has to the song in the in the 2000 movie Charlie's Angels.
A young and nervous Ytossie from the reality TV show Temptation Island I was one of the bootie-shaking performers in the video for this song.
Mix-a-Lot wasn't the first to use the phrase "Silicone Sisters" to refer to surgically enhanced women - Bruce Springsteen used it in his first single, "
Blinded By The Light":
Some silicone sister with her manager's mister told me I got what it takesThe sketch comedy show In Living Color did a parody of this song by "Trail Mix-a-Lot" called "Baby Got Snacks." In this version, Jamie Foxx raps about being into obese women.
A cover of the song was sung in the
Glee episode "Sadie Hawkins," which aired on January 24, 2013 in the US. The Fox TV show's version was borrowed from an interpretation by singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton, who was more than a little miffed not to be acknowledged. "It sounds like it actually uses the audio from my recording - not the vocals obviously, but the instruments sound EXTREMELY similar," he wrote on his blog.
Coulon added: "They got in touch with my peeps to basically say that they're within their legal rights to do this, and that I should be happy for the exposure (even though they do not credit me, and have not even publicly acknowledged that it's my version - so you know, it's kind of SECRET exposure)."
The song has been repurposed for various commercials over the years. In 2005 it was used in back-to-school commercials for Target with the lyrics changed to "Baby Got Backpack"; Macaroni Grill made it "I Like Big Crusts" in 2014.
The strangest adaptation is probably "I Like Square Butts" for a 2009
Burger King tie-in with SpongeBob SquarePants. The "booty" in this case is the toy that comes in the kids meal.
This song has been covered by Throwdown, a heavy metal band, and by Agent Felix, a pop-punk band.
Sir Mix-A-Lot kept performing this song decades after it was released. In the '10s, he developed a 10-minute version that he would perform "if the crowd is into it."
Country star Joe Nichols transformed the song
into a country shuffle for his 2017
Never Gets Old album. Nichols had been performing the song live for years as a bit of comic relief.
Sir Mix-A-Lot's girlfriend at the time,
Amylia Rivas, is the voice of the Valley Girl at the beginning of the song with the dialogue that starts, "Oh my God Becky, look at her butt." She was watching the Super Bowl with Mix when they came up with the idea for the song. (It was a Bud Light Spuds MacKenzie commercial that triggered them. "They had four girls that were shaped like stop signs with big-ass hair, and we were like, This is really not what Black folks are digging," Mix-a-Lot said.)
Rivas' lines were lip-synched by a white girl in the video; she looks very different from that character but is a talented voice actress who had no trouble playing the part of the insouciant white girl. The character is very well known thanks to the song, and Rivas has revisited her for various marketing campaigns.
Mix-A-Lot thought about making this a serious song, but thought better of it. "I realized if it was serious it would just be dismissed, so I kept it tongue-in-cheek," he told Vlad TV.
This song is a topic of discussion in the 2002 Friends episode "The One with Ross's Inappropriate Song." Ross (David Schwimmer) sings it to his baby daughter, which makes her laugh. When her mom (Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston) finds out, she's not pleased. "If you think about it, it actually promotes a healthy body image," he says in his defense. It turns out the baby will only laugh to "Baby Got Back." "Nothing else works, the girl is all about the ass," Rachel says.
At public appearances, Sir Mix-A-Lot is typically asked these two questions:
1) What are you doing these days?
2) How do you feel about "Baby Got Back"?
His answers are usually along the lines of, "I walk to the mailbox and pick up my royalty checks," and, "'I love 'Baby Got Back.' I sing it all the way back to the house after getting my checks out of the mailbox."
Six Mix-A-Lot showed up in a
"Baby Got Back"-themed commercial for Chex Mix Bagel Chips ("the bagel is back") in 2023. "I like my snacks and I cannot lie," he raps in the spot.
"Baby Got Back" earned Sir Mix-A-Lot a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. It was just the third year that award was presented; the first winner was MC Hammer with "
U Can't Touch This," followed by LL Cool J with "
Mama Said Knock You Out."
Movies to use this song include:
The Do-Over (2016)
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (2015)
Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)
The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)
Yogi Bear (2010)
The House Bunny (2008)
Happy Feet (2006)
Scary Movie 4 (2006)
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
Shark Tale (2004)
Jackass: The Movie (2002)
TV shows to use it include:
The Simpsons
Family Guy
Glee
Bones
American Dad!
Friends
One Tree Hill
Futurama
Nicki Minaj, who's definitely got back, sampled big chunks of this song on her 2014 hit "
Anaconda."
Sir Mix-A-Lot signed to Rick Rubin's label, Def American Recordings, in 1991; "Baby Got Back" was his first single on the label. Rubin has quite an ear - his productions include the albums Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Raising Hell by Run-DMC and American IV: The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash.
When Mix recorded the song, he considered it a filler track for the Mack Daddy album, but Rubin knew it was a hit. "Mix, get ready to make a lot of money," Rubin told him.
Rubin had Sir Mix-A-Lot rework the song to emphasize the lines most likely to offend the song, so you'll hear he punches lines like "I'm down to get the friction on" and "silicone parts are made for toys." Mix says that's were the energy in the song came from.
Sir Mix-A-Lot says the beat was influenced by Kraftwerk, the German electronic music pioneers.
Cosmopolitan, a women's magazine known as "Cosmo," gets two mentions in the lyrics:
Yeah, baby, when it comes to females
Cosmo ain't got nothin' to do with my selection...
So Cosmo says you're fat
Well I ain't down with that
"At the time, Cosmo defined anything bigger than a heroin addict as fat," Mix-A-Lot told Vlad TV. "The norm at that time was white, thin chicks with big heads."
Near the end of the song, Mix-A-Lot plugs his 900 number:
Dial 1-900-MIXALOT
And kick them nasty thoughts
These 900 numbers would charge the caller by the minute. They were popular in the early '90s and often used by singers and groups to make some extra cash; fans would call them and get a message from the artist saying what they were up to. The most popular one was from New Kids on the Block, which got millions of calls. Paula Abdul, Bobby Brown and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince are among others who had 900 numbers, but only Mix-A-Lot was bold enough to promote his in a song.
Sir Mix-A-Lot says "Baby Got Back" has earned him well over $100 million, mostly from uses in movies, commercials and TV shows. He's the sole writer and producer on the song, and he owns the publishing, which allows him to approve the song for these uses and keep all proceeds. And he's happy to grant most requests if the price is right. "Why own your publishing if you're not willing to leverage it?" he says.
