Baby Got Back Lyrics

[Chorus: Sir Mix-a-Lot]
(L.A. face with a Oakland booty)
Baby got back
(L.A. face with a Oakland booty)
(L.A. face with a Oakland booty)

[Verse 2: Sir Mix-a-Lot]
I like 'em round, and big
And when I'm throwin' a gig
I just can't help myself, I'm actin' like an animal
Now here's my scandal
I wanna get you home
And ugh, double-up, ugh-ugh
I ain't talkin' 'bout Playboy
'Cause silicone parts are made for toys

I want 'em real thick and juicy
So find that juicy double
Mix-a-Lot's in trouble
Beggin' for a piece of that bubble
So I'm lookin' at rock videos
Knock-kneed bimbos walkin' like hoes
You can have them bimbos

I'll keep my women like Flo Jo
A word to the thick soul sisters, I wanna get with ya
I won't cuss or hit ya
But I gotta be straight when I say I wanna— (Uh)
'Til the break of dawn
Baby got it goin' on
A lot of simps won't like this song
'Cause them punks like to hit it and quit it
And I'd rather stay and play
'Cause I'm long, and I'm strong
And I'm down to get the friction on
So, ladies (Yeah), Ladies (Yeah)
If you wanna roll in my Mercedes (Yeah)
Then turn around, stick it out
Even white boys got to shout
[Chorus: Sir Mix-a-Lot]
Baby got back
Baby got back

[Bridge: Sir Mix-a-Lot]
Yeah, baby, when it comes to females
Cosmo ain't got nothin' to do with my selection
36-24-36? Haha, only if she's 5'3"


[Verse 3: Sir Mix-a-Lot]
So your girlfriend rolls a Honda
Playin' workout tapes by Fonda
But Fonda ain't got a motor in the back of her Honda

My anaconda don't want none
Unless you've got buns, hun

You can do side bends or sit-ups
But please don't lose that butt
Some brothers wanna play that hard role
And tell you that the butt ain't gold
So they toss it and leave it
And I pull up quick to retrieve it
So Cosmo says you're fat
Well I ain't down with that

'Cause your waist is small and your curves are kickin'
And I'm thinkin' 'bout stickin'
To the beanpole dames in the magazines:
You ain't it, Miss Thing

Give me a sista, I can't resist her
Red beans and rice didn't miss her
Some knucklehead tried to diss
'Cause his girls are on my list
He had game, but he chose to hit 'em
And I pull up quick to get wit 'em
So ladies, if the butt is round
And you want a triple X throwdown
Dial 1-900-MIX-A-LOT
And kick them nasty thoughts

[Outro: Sir Mix-a-Lot]
Baby got back
Baby got back
Little in the middle but she got much back
Little in the middle but she got much back
Little in the middle but she got much back
Little in the middle but she got much back

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About

Genius Annotation

“Baby Got Back” was inspired by Anthony “Sir Mix-A-Lot” Ray’s frustration with seeing feminine beauty in America portrayed as a valley-girl “popsicle stick” figure in ads like the Spuds MacKenzie Budweiser series. He was also frustrated watching his full-figured girlfriend at the time Amylia Dorsey struggle to get work as an actress and model.

Mix-A-Lot wrote “Baby Got Back” to share how black men (and white men too) find women attractive who have “curves — and I’m not talking about women who are shaped like me, with a gut, but women who ran five miles a day, with a washboard, six-pack stomach and a nice round, beautiful, supple ass.”

Mix-A-Lot also wanted to call attention how females felt they had to “damn near kill themselves to try to look like these beanpole models that you see in Vogue magazine.” Also, he wanted to speak out against Hollywood’s general portrayal of African-American females mainly as “maids, servants and prostitutes”. His intention was to share these views in a “tongue-in-cheek” and “funny way”.

Despite record label owner Rick Rubin feeling “Baby Got Back” would be a better first single, Mix-A-Lot insisted on releasing “One Time’s Got No Case” instead. When that song did ‘next to nothing’ on the charts, “Baby Got Back” became the album’s next single.

Its controversial music video featured buttocks-shaped props and a heavy focus on the backsides of several full-figured dancers, leading MTV to briefly ban it due to “a recently instituted rule against showing female body parts with no reference to a face.” Eventually the video was re-edited and then re-added into rotation – but only after 9pm.

Initially most radio stations balked at airing the song, but later got on board after MTV and Video Jukebox began airing its video regularly.

“Baby Got Back” finally entered the Hot 100 at #86 and then spent twelve weeks working its way up, eventually reaching the top spot. It is Mix-A-Lot’s only song to reach higher than #70. It was ranked the second biggest song of 1992 in the US behind Boyz II Men’s “End Of The Road” and won a Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance. The song also found varied levels of chart success in seven other countries around the world.

In 2008, VH1 ranked it the #17 greatest song of hip hop.

The track is built on a sample from “Technicolor” by Channel One.

The then-VP of A&R at the record label later summed up the song’s legacy:

“Baby [Got Back]” will forever be a great combination of a silly pop song with an earnest resolve to change the perception of body image in America.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did Sir Mix-a-Lot say about "Baby Got Back"?
Genius Answer

“Baby Got Back” was largely inspired by experiences Mix-A-Lot’s then-girlfriend Amylia Dorsey went through. She told Vulture:

My background is such that being a woman of color — I’m half-Mexican, half-black, and have always been curvy — was not appreciated at all. Where I grew up, in the suburbs of Seattle, if you weren’t built like Paris Hilton you weren’t appreciated. I worked at a modeling agency as a teenager, and I taught hair makeup and runway classes to six-foot-tall girls who weighed 90 pounds. But I didn’t get much work, and neither did anyone who looked like me. You could have the highest cheekbones in the world, but if you were a little more broad at the beam, forget it. The kind of thing that women in my position went through made Mix angry. He’d say ‘I don’t understand why you can’t get modeling work,’ and I’d say ‘Look behind me.’ This was my experience that he was writing about.

Mix-A-Lot added:

There was one event that really made me think that I should do a song about this, which was irritating the shit out of me. Amy and I were at a hotel on tour, when we saw one of the Spuds MacKenzie ads for Budweiser during the Super Bowl. You’d see these girls in the ad: Each one was shaped like a stop sign, with big hair [and] straight up-and-down bird legs. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I was so sick of that shit. Now, Amy never said anything about all this until she realized I was so in favor of her physique. She was an actress, and she started admitting that she felt like she lost a lot of parts because of her hourglass figure. I knew for a fact that many artists felt that if they didn’t use a skinny-model-type woman in their video, then mainstream America would reject the song. But I do not agree with that: If you look at Dolly Parton at her peak, a lot of white guys were like “daammn!”

According to The Billboard Book Of Number One Hits:

[Mix-A-Lot] was making a video for “My Hooptie” when he got the idea for “Baby Got Back”. He explains, “A lot of the girls at the video were telling me they couldn’t get parts because they were too fat. And I said, "Too fat? Your waist is 23 inches. What are you talking about?” “Yeah, but my ass is 38 inches.” Admitting he’s attracted to curvy women and not the “straight up and down 10-year-old boy look”, the rapper said he still tried to make the song as nonsexist as possible. “But you couldn’t do ‘Baby Got Brains’ and sell records.”

The director of the song’s music video shared a humorous anecdote about auditioning girls to be in it:

For the casting of all the dancers, Mix and his friends wanted to have butt approval. So the dancers would come in for the audition, and I had to snap a polaroid of their butts. I was mortified: “Okay, now I have to take a close-up picture of your buttocks.” But a lot of the women auditioning thought it was hilarious. We took all the Polaroids, and made a giant grid of the buttocks, which we Fed-Exed to Seattle so that Mix and his friends could approve the butts.

The Senior VP of Music and Talent at MTV at the time told Vulture that Mix-A-Lot explained to him why the channel should air the song’s then-banned controversial video:

Mix told me that he felt that the message of the song is that all women are constantly bombarded with images of super-thin models on TV and in magazines, and he thought that women and young girls need to hear that not everyone feels that way, as well as defending a more African-American body image … So I said, “You know what? I’ll go back to NYC and bring this to the top.”

An in-depth interview with Mix-A-Lot by DJ Vlad about the song is included below:

Credits
Written By
Additional Vocals
Release Date
February 27, 1992
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