Sir Mix-A-Lot

As the saying goes, if you're going to be remembered as a one-hit wonder, you'd better make it one to remember. Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" certainly qualifies. The Seattle rapper's ode to big butts was the second-best-selling single of 1992 and won a Grammy, but the phrase -- and, to some extent, the debate about whether the song was degrading or glorifying women -- has never really gone away.

Yet all the attention it generated still manages to sell Sir Mix-A-Lot short. Few now recall that the former Anthony Ray had a platinum album to his name well before "Baby Got Back" (his 1988 debut, Swass), or that his thrash/hip-hop mash-up with Metal Church beat Public Enemy's more heralded pairing with Anthrax by three years. Not to mention that his homegrown refinement of 2 Live Crew's electro-booty music put the Pacific Northwest on the hip-hop map. The hits may have dried up -- his 2003 album, Daddy's Home, completely failed to chart -- but despite his bootylicious trademark, Mix-A-Lot isn't just sitting on his ass.