Last updated on July 5th, 2024 at 06:18 pm

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Twenty-five years ago Tuesday, a career-defining single was born — and with it, endless sitcom jokes and rap homages. It was referenced in Sing, the 2016 animated children’s movie, and in Shrek years before that. But when it debuted in 1992, there were those who took it to heart as an anthem of body positivity.

“Baby Got Back” begins kind of a heartbreaking scene: a white woman talking to her friend Becky, straight up mocking a black woman. The man behind the song, Anthony Ray — better known as Sir Mix-a-Lot — says he didn’t make that up.

“It was like a blown-out, glorified version of what was actually being said at that time,” he says. “Basically, pop culture was waif-thin, heroin addict, big hair, fake boobs — you know, that was what they thought beautiful was. And because of the way it was discussed publicly, it made women who had naturally curvy bodies … run around with sweaters wrapped around their waist.”

“When I heard it, I just felt so — it was so affirming,” says Erin Aubry Kaplan. In the mid-‘90s, Kaplan was staff writer at LA Weekly. She and wrote a big feature article about the paradoxical way black women’s butts were seen — using “Baby Got Back” as an epigraph.

Sir Mix-a-Lot On 25 Years Of ‘Baby Got Back’

Photo: Rick Kern/WireImage/Getty Images