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Sir Mix A Lot...Seattle's First Hip Hop Superstar

ChillyDawgChillyDawg Member Posts: 1,469
in Yellow Snow's Record Shoppe
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Mix-a-Lot

Sir Mix A Lot YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/SirMixAlotChannel/playlists

Anthony Ray was born on August 12, 1963, in Auburn, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, and grew up in Seattle's Central District. Growing up, Ray's mother worked as a licensed practical nurse (LPN) at the King County Jail making 6 or 7 dollars an hour. Ray was a fan of hip hop and started rhyming in the early 1980s.

While living in the Bryant Manor apartments on 19th Ave and East Yesler Way, Anthony Ray started school at Roosevelt High School, near the University District, when the Seattle Public School District was in the throes of what would be a 21-year experiment to integrate the school system; Guns N' Roses member Duff McKagan and actress and Charmed star Rose McGowan also went there. Students were bused from their neighborhoods to schools at the other end of the city. From 1978, when the busing program started, to 1999, when it was shelved, minorities carried the burden of busing, piling onto buses from the South End and the Central Area that were headed for predominantly white schools in the North End.

Ray said he knew that some North End residents didn't want black kids bused into their neighborhoods. But for him, the experience offered respite from the projects. "I’ve heard things like, 'Forced integration is not good,' 'I want my kid to be able to go to school in our community; that’s why we moved here' – all those things I totally understand," he said. "But from my perspective, I didn’t have the luxury of living in a neighborhood where a good school was. We didn’t make that kind of money. So from my perspective, it was the best thing that could have happened to me." A music teacher at Eckstein Middle School introduced Ray to the possibility of a music career. Before becoming a rapper, Ray at an early age was interested in electronics and CB radio, one of his early jobs was working at a pinball arcade servicing machines, during that time he also started to fix keyboards and other musical equipment. He still works with electronics as a hobby.

Early on, Sir Mix-A-Lot had an ear and a passion for music. Soon after high school he began DJing parties at local community centers. By 1983 Mix-A-Lot had begun playing weekends regularly at the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club in South Seattle. Soon he moved locations and started throwing his parties at the Rotary Boys and Girls Club in the Central District. It was there that he met 'Nasty' Nes Rodriguez, a local radio DJ and host of Fresh Tracks, the West Coast's first rap radio show on Seattle station KKFX (KFOX).

Sir Mix-a-Lot partnered with Nasty Nes and local businessman Ed Locke to found the Nastymix record label in 1983. The first song to gain popularity outside of Seattle was "Square Dance Rap" in 1986. Mix-a-Lot had originally decided to rap the entire song slow, then speed and pitch it up in post production, Mix later told Seattle Refined in 2018 that "I didn't want to rap, that's why I use this weird Smurf voice". After the song was picked up by DJs in clubs nationwide, he went touring in Florida, New York, and other states. While in Arizona, he noticed a street named Broadway with a restaurant named Dick's, just like Seattle. This gave him the idea to write his next hit "Posse on Broadway".

Mix-a-Lot's next hit, released in 1987, was the single "Posse on Broadway," whose title referred to Broadway in Seattle's Capitol Hill district. The song made the Top 100 but quickly disappeared, although it remains popular in the Seattle area for its references to many local landmarks.

Swass, Sir Mix-a-Lot's debut album, was released in 1988 with two other singles: "Square-Dance Rap" and a hip hop cover of the Black Sabbath song "Iron Man" backed by the band Metal Church. In 1990, the Recording Industry Association of America certified Swass platinum.

Seminar, released in 1989 featured "My Hooptie", "Beepers", "Gortex" and "I Got Game".



Sir Mix A Lot Full Album Playlists

1988: Swass



1989: Seminar



1992: Mack Daddy



1994: Chief Boot Knocka



1996: Return of the Bumpasaurus



2003: Daddy's Home
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