Twenty-three years after “Baby Got Back” smashed the charts and turned him into an icon, rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot is still touring and going strong. Now, he’s bringing his hits and measurement preferences to Baton Rouge, performing at the Varsity Theatre tonight as part of a cross-country tour.
It turns out he’s no stranger to the area — he’s enjoyed plenty of what the city has to offer.
Sir Mix-A-Lot had a friend who lived in Walker, and he said he used to come out to Baton Rouge often to hang out and eat crawfish.
He said he enjoys the bayou, and despite Thursday seemingly being an odd night for a show, he plans on making it a great night for everyone.
“When we perform, we perform with the people,” Sir Mix-A-Lot said. “We don’t show up in limousines or any of that stuff, we come and reach out and touch people. It’s a 100 percent live show, so people will have fun with it.”
At the show, Sir Mix-A-Lot will no doubt perform his quintessential ode to voluptuous women, “Baby Got Back.” Released in 1992, the song has since become a pop culture phenomenon and a mainstay, referenced everywhere from “Friends” to “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
Before that record, he said people thought he was done, having already had platinum and gold records.
“I went from platinum to gold, so people thought I was already over,” Sir Mix-A-Lot said. “Then, I signed a major deal and did ‘Baby Got Back’ for Rick Rubin, and that just catapulted me to another level, a level I didn’t even understand prior to recording it.”
He looks back fondly on his hit anthem, and said other artists should do the same with their own hits. He doesn’t agree with artists trying to distance themselves from the songs that define them, believing it to be a slap in the faces of the fans.
“Can you imagine Kleenex coming out and saying, ‘you know what, we hate tissue,’” Sir Mix-A-Lot said. “It doesn’t make any sense. Each song, especially a hit song, is its own brand, so to act like you’re ashamed of it snatches the credibility right out from under the song.”
“Baby Got Back” was initially written as his knee-jerk reaction to how Sir Mix-A-Lot saw women, particularly African-American women, being portrayed on television and in magazines and other media. He said he didn’t like how in that era, the media tried to make waif-thin, heroin-chic women the norm instead of more shapely women.
“I understood the criticism that I reduced a woman to a body part,” he said. “But that song is about more than a body part, and if I would have done ‘Baby Got Brains,’ who would’ve listened to it? I had to have fun with it and be tongue-in-cheek.”
Now, the song is referenced and sampled quite often, with the latest sampling in the form of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.”
Sir Mix-A-Lot said Minaj called him and told him what she was thinking about doing with the song, and he felt confident, believing her to be a hard-working artist.
“I made it clear to advertisers or whoever that we were willing to license the song out under the right scenarios,” he said. “I knew that if Nicki Minaj did it, it was going to work. She’s an incredible artist, and I’m not just saying that because she used my song.”
Guests will hear “Baby Got Back” and other old-school jams at the show. Sir Mix-A-Lot said he’s looking forward to the Baton Rouge crowd, and can’t wait to get to the people, and of course, the food.
Doors at the Varsity Theatre open at 8:00 p.m. and the show starts at 9:00 p.m. Tickets are $25 the day of the show.
You can reach Kayla Randall on Twitter @kay_ran21.