I Like Big Butts

This song is about women with big butts, and the men who love them. Mix-a-Lot got the idea for this 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.

This 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 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 two Valley Girls disparaging a black woman with a big butt. It was the first successful Valley Girl integration since the Frank Zappa song "Valley Girl."

This brought Sir Mix-a-Lot national fame; previously he was locally popular in Seattle. After trying to follow up with other butt-related songs, he fell into obscurity as a performer, but did have another hit as a songwriter: he wrote the Pussycat Dolls hit "Don't Cha" with Cee-Lo Green. Despite having just this one hit, he is still a big part of rap history - his old mixer is on display at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.