Sir Mix a-Lot
Booking Sir Mix a-Lot
To book Sir Mix a-Lot for your next event, please fill in the form to the right. One of our booking agents will reply within 24 hours.
The staff of Headline Booking Group will work with you to produce a memorable event. Get started now by filling out our no-obligation Artist Request Form and we will work with you to book Sir Mix a-Lot or another artist for your event.
Biography
Coming from a city — Seattle — with barely any hip-hop scene to speak of, Mix-A-Lot co-founded his own record label, promoted his music himself, produced all his own tracks, and essentially pulled himself up by the proverbial American bootstraps. Even before ‘Baby Got Back,’ Mix-A-Lot was a platinum-selling album artist, with a strong following in the hip-hop community, known for bouncy, danceable, bass-heavy tracks indebted to old-school electro. However, it took signing with Rick Rubin’s Def American label — coupled with an exaggerated, parodic pimp image — to carry him into the mainstream.Sir Mix-A-Lot was born Anthony Ray in Seattle on August 12, 1963. An eclectic music fan but a rabid hip-hop devotee, he was already actively rapping in the early ’80s, and co-founded the Nastymix record label in 1983 with his DJ, Nasty Nes, who also hosted Seattle’s first hip-hop radio show. His first single was 1987’s ‘Posse on Broadway,’ which referred to a street in Seattle, not New York; it became a local hit, and paved the way for his first LP, 1988’s Swass, which also featured the popular novelty ‘Square Dance Rap,’ and a Run-D.M.C.-style cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man,’ with backing by Seattle thrashers Metal Church.
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The video for ‘Posse on Broadway’ landed some airplay on MTV, and became Sir Mix-A-Lot’s first national chart single in late 1988; that in turn pushed Swass into the Top 20 of the R&B album chart, and by 1989, it had sold over a million copies. Also in 1989, Mix-A-Lot released his follow up album Seminar, which produced three charting singles in ‘Beepers,’ ‘My Hooptie,’ and ‘I Got Game’.
Financial disputes with Nastymix resulted in a fierce court battle and ended Mix-A-Lot’s association with the label. Fortunately, Def American head Rick Rubin stepped in to offer him a major-label contract. Mix-A-Lot had long had a knack for mimicking (and mocking) the pimps he’d watched while growing up in Seattle, and adopted their visual style with Rubin’s encouragement. He debuted for Def American with 1992’s Mack Daddy, whose first single, ‘One Time’s Got No Case,’ was a critique of racial profiling by police. It went virtually unheard, but the follow-up, ‘Baby Got Back,’ became a pop phenomenon virtually from the moment MTV aired its provocative video (which was eventually consigned to evening-hours only).
‘Baby Got Back’ spent five weeks atop the pop charts, selling over two million copies; it also pushed Mack Daddy into the Top Ten, and went on to win a Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance. Billboard magazine ranked it as the second biggest single of the year, behind only Boyz II Men’s juggernaut ‘End of the Road.’With 1994’s Chief Boot Knocka, Sir Mix-A-Lot tried to follow Mack Daddy — and ‘Baby Got Back’ in particular — with a set of danceable party tunes that, like the strip-club anthem ‘Put ‘Em on the Glass,’ often played up his obsession with the female form. Although it sold respectably among R&B audiences, the mainstream — perhaps assuming they had already heard Mix-A-Lot’s best shot — virtually ignored it.
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