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What Happens When You Get Sir Mix-A-Lot's Phone Number

Sir Mix-a-Lot performs onstage at VH1's 5th Annual Streamy Awards Sept. 17 in Los Angeles.
Mark Davis
/
Getty Images
Sir Mix-a-Lot performs onstage at VH1's 5th Annual Streamy Awards Sept. 17 in Los Angeles.

Jonathan Nichols got a new phone number when he was in law school in Seattle. He told The Seattle Times he wanted an easy number to remember, with a local area code to help him in a job search.

But he realized something was wrong when he got a few odd text messages. First it was a message asking him to check out a YouTube video. Then he got calls from luxury car dealers, asking if he wanted to test drive Ferraris and Lamborghinis. And offers for backstage passes to concerts. He told the newspaper he got overloaded with pictures of women in bikinis.

Nichols finally figured out whose old number he had when he got "Happy Birthday" messages with references to Sir Mix-A-Lot's 1992 hit song, "Baby Got Back." He looked up the hip-hop artist's birthday, and sure enough, it was the same day.

"That's when it all made sense," he told the Times.

Despite all the messages, Nichols says he's never changing his phone number. What better conversation piece than mentioning you have a famous rapper's phone number and you get his raunchy texts?

For his part, the real Sir Mix-A-Lot says Nichols should take advantage of his situation. He told Good Morning America, "If he's a lawyer, if he sifts through those calls, he will find clients. Trust me!"

The rapper also made a kind offer to help when Nichols is inundated with pictures of women in suggestive poses. "Just to help him offload some of this pressure, he could always forward the ladies' pics to me," Mix told GMA. "That should alleviate about 80 percent of the problem."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

James Doubek is an associate editor and reporter for NPR. He frequently covers breaking news for NPR.org and NPR's hourly newscast. In 2018, he reported feature stories for NPR's business desk on topics including electric scooters, cryptocurrency, and small business owners who lost out when Amazon made a deal with Apple.