When Seattle law student Jonathan Nichols changed his phone number, he picked one that would be easy to remember. As it happens, those easy numbers used to be none other than Sir Mix-A-Lot‘s digits, the man behind celebrated booty-anthem Baby Got Back.
The first message received was a link to a YouTube video of a guy making beats out of a synthesiser, with the caption “check this guy out”. While understandably, Nichols dismissed the message as one person having the wrong number, it wasn’t long before he was inundated with messages, all intended for Sir Mix-A-Lot. He was receiving everything from offers of backstage passes, pictures of women in various stages of undress, and phone calls from car dealerships asking if he’d like to take their luxury cars out ‘for a spin’- “I’d love to,” Nichols would advise the salespeople. “But I think you have the wrong guy. I’m a broke law student.”
Eight months of these texts went by, until the day of revelation in mid-August. While Nichols was at a softball tournament, his phone started going “off the hook.” Photos of women with lips pursed, many ‘Love you’, and ‘Happy Birthday’ texts, more women, and one revealing reference to the 1992 rap hit, Baby Got Back. After his tournament, Nichols and his buddies did a Google search for the hip-hop artist, Sir Mix-A-Lot. Lo and behold, it was his birthday.
The Seattle Times caught up with the rapper. “Are you serious?” Sir Mix-A-Lot said when told of the story. “That is hilarious. Poor fella.” He did dole out some friendly advice for Nichols, however. “Don’t check any text messages in front of your wife. That would be the first thing,” he says. “Tell him any really sexy pictures—little in the middle, and if she’s got much back—give them the new number.”
While Nichols could utilise this newfound power in many different ways (ie living the dream), he has instead chosen to use it as a funny anecdote. “When interviewers have asked me, ‘What’s something interesting that no one else knows?’ or when people I meet working political campaigns tell me about meeting Bill Clinton, I always say, ‘I have Sir Mix-A-Lot’s old phone number.'”