Sir Mix-A-Lot says society has changed the way it’s viewed women between 1992, the year in which the rapper released “Baby Got Back,” an ode to curvaceous women, and 2014, a year that has seen Nicki Minaj incorporate his 1992 hit into her new smash single, “Anaconda.”
“When I did ‘Baby Got Back,’ women with curves were not accepted,” Sir Mix-A-Lot says in an interview with Billboard. “But that’s a fact. They were not in the mainstream. We’ve come 180 degrees from that point. Not only is it accepted, but it’s also expected, which I thought was cool. To me, if nothing else proved it, that did. It was a sexy ass video.”
When asked why he believes that “booty has only recently gone mainstream,” Mix-A-Lot explains his perspective on the matter.
“A lot of people try to give me credit for it,” he says. “When I did ‘Baby Got Back,’ that was just a reflection of the African-American community. We’ve always liked curves, and a lot of people misunderstood it because let’s face it: 20 years prior to ‘Baby Got Back,’ the only images you saw of a black woman on television were she was probably 300 pounds and cleaning the house with a rag on her head. Or, they were comfortable with the African-American female image that was basically an assimilation to what White America wanted.
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“There was always a desire in the community [for] the hourglass figure,” he continues. “We loved the curvaceous women, the little waist, the hips, the boobs… the equipment. ‘Baby Got Back’ was already a reflection of what was going on. I didn’t see it as this gigantic political statement. When I designed that song, it was to just be an out for women, to tell them to stop wrapping these big sweaters around their waist [and] quit being ashamed. It’s like Serena Williams — she’s not fat. She’s in shape, and she happens to have a butt. She’s not ashamed of it, and I love that. So I don’t know if I did it, but I may be part of the reason that the masses kind of took a liking to it because it was an uphill battle. Let’s face it: that Cosmo line [‘So Cosmo says you’re fat / Well, I ain’t down with that!’] didn’t go over well back then.”
Sir Mix-A-Lot says he has new music on the way, too. The rapper-engineer says he wants to do a record, but adds, “I want to release it in a way that doesn’t look like a desperate attempt at relevancy.”
Mix-A-Lot says he’s not a “train wreck” and that he still makes “good money.”
In the past, Sir Mix-A-Lot has called “Anaconda” a new and improved version of “Baby Got Back.”
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“It was the new and improved version,” Sir Mix-a-Lot said in August. “Because when I did mine the girls that had the nice asses in my video I wasn’t allowed to use. Right? So, they bumped a lot of ‘em. And we ended up using girls that didn’t really have asses. But this is a new era. And Nicki’s in charge. How they gonna say ‘no’ to a woman talking about some asses? Beautiful. If I could’ve just been on the set that would have been cool with me.”
RELATED: Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” Dubbed New & Improved “Baby Got Back” By Sir Mix-A-Lot
