(This is just a sidenote, but the intro valley-girl speech is:
Oh, my, god. Becky, look at her butt.In any case, in an interview with The Onion's A.V. club, Sir Mix-a-Lot answers the question of why "Baby Got Back" was so popular.
It is so big. *scoff* She looks like,
one of those rap guys' girlfriends.
But, you know, who understands those rap guys? *scoff*
They only talk to her, because,
she looks like a total prostitute, 'kay?
I mean, her butt, is just so big.
I can't believe it's just so round, it's like,
out there, I mean - gross. Look!
She's just so ... black!
When I did "Baby Got Back," I did it to be unpopular. Really, I did it to piss people off. You had these Spuds MacKenzie girls, little skinny chicks looking like stop signs, with big hair and skinny bodies. I did it as a knee-jerk response to that kind of stuff. I didn't think it would ever be popular, but there were a lot of chicks out there with the J. Lo body, and they wore sweaters around their waists because they were told that they had fat asses—in a negative way, not in a good way. There were more of those girls than there were little waif heroin-looking chicks. I think that had a lot to do with it. A lot of women were saying, "It's about time!" I think the more the establishment fought the song, the more the "liberal males" who thought they knew what women wanted to hear... The more they hated the song, the more women liked it, and the more guys like me liked it. That was the coolest thing about "Baby Got Back." The establishment didn't embrace the song, which is what kept me from being the next pop guy to fizzle out and get laughed at, get dissed on TV. That helped save me. The fact that MTV banned the record made the record, in a weird way.
Also, just as interesting, about the song's reception:
I remember I had some women picketing me before a show at a college. So I thought, instead of doing what a typical guy would do, flipping them off from a window or something, I would debate them. So we sat down and debated. We talked about the record, and they explained what they didn't like about it. They said, "You reduce a woman to a body part." I said, "First of all, I'm not one of these self-important rappers who thinks that everything I say should be the gospel. But I just got tired of women being told that they have to starve themselves to be beautiful." And actually, other women started to clap and agree with what I said. This was way after "Baby Got Back," in '94 or '95.
"Baby Got Back" has always seemed relatively tame to me, and the fact that it was banned is a little mystifying. The intro, though, is particularly interesting, because it links together so many ideas, and then the song proceeds to undermine the relationship the "valley girl" establishes between them. Whereas whoever is speaking to "Becky" connects a full figure with prostitution, rap, and being black, the speaker in the song (and Sir Mix-a-lot) connect that full figure with beauty, health, and, in a weird way, a sort of respect:
"So Cosmo says you're fat
Well I ain't down with that!
Cause your waist is small and your curves are kickin"
Which is an interesting contrast: what mainstream culture defines as beautiful and what people in a specific (or non-specific context: "Even white boys got to shout Baby got back!") actually find beautiful. The fact that this remains the single-most famous thing Sir Mix-a-lot created is also interesting, considering his prolific relationships with other Seattle musicians from a number of different scenes. It...is just odd, that the song is a better-remembered pop culture artifact than the cultural trends it responded to, and that it is often understood through the same sort of lens as the fundementally different songs Mumia Abu-Jamal was talking about in "'A Rap thing,' 'On Rapping Rap' and 'Hip Hop or Homeland Security'". (I don't know why, but I can't get the font to behave...)
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