sir mix-a-lot

Whenever people describe Sir Mix-A-Lot as a “one-hit wonder” I can’t help but bristle. Sure, Baby Got Back remains one of the most recognizable hits of the 90s, basically dwarfing the rest of his catalogue… but anyone who’s listened to his 1992 classic Mack Daddy (or its follow-up Chief Boot Knocka) knows that Mix was one of the decade’s more severely underrated MC’s (hmm… maybe I should write a piece about that in the music section - stay tuned!)

It’s not altogether surprising. With Death Row Records and West Coast gangster rap at its apex in the early-90s (and the East Coast coming in hot with artists such as Biggie), a tongue-in-cheek hip-hop jester from Seattle didn’t have an obvious place in the musical landscape. Nonetheless, Mix’s beats, flow, and lyrical game were far better than he ever got credit for (look, I love Baby Got Back as much as the next guy - but that song basically left him pigeonholed for the rest of his career as some crass, sexist buffoon… okay, that was admittedly a significant part of his persona, but I’m not sure people grasped how self-aware he was about it). Anyway, I was a full-fledged Mix-a-Holic back in the day… to the point that I even watched his ridiculous anthology series The Watcher on UPN, for God’s sake. My credentials are *not* to be questioned.

At any rate, I was obviously delighted to see Mix receive the well-deserved Funko Pop treatment and was quick to add him to my collection. His figure, not surprisingly, is modeled directly on the cover for the Baby Got Back single - same outfit (black leather jacket, black shirt and pants, black kicks with white laces), same pose (elbows raised, hands pressed against his chest), same accessories (white sunglasses and white fedora with black band). On the downside, his heavy-lidded expression is somewhat devoid of personality (he's downright sleepy-looking), paint application on the glasses is a bit sloppy, and they didn’t get the girth quite right - Mix is looking a little too slender for my taste, you could almost mistake him for a fourth member of Run DMC or something.​

There are, however, two details that absolutely kick this figure up a notch. The first is the MIX-A-LOT brass knuckles (rendered perfectly)… and the second (which can be a bit hard to see while he remains boxed) is that our man is literally posed on top of a bare set of buttocks. Baby Got Back indeed. And unlike the cartoonish rendition on the bottom left, Funko Mix is standing on a lovingly crafted and almost disturbingly realistic female posterior. Who says Pops have no artistic integrity??