Some Lucky Law Student Ended Up With Sir Mix-A-Lot's Old Phone Number
Seattle Times- The first text came not long after Jonathan Nichols got his new phone. “Check this guy out,” it said, with a link to a YouTube video of a guy making beats out of a synthesizer. It was good, Nichols thought, but couldn’t have been meant for him. He was a law student at Seattle University who had just switched to a local number to prepare for the job search ahead. “That’s pretty cool,” Nichols, 33, texted back. “But you clearly have the wrong number.”
Then he started getting phone calls from luxury-car dealerships — Ferrari, Lamborghini, Jaguar — all asking if a Mr. Anthony Ray would like to come out to the dealership and take one or two of their cars for a spin. “I’d love to,” Nichols would tell the very polite salespeople. “But I think you have the wrong guy. I’m a broke law student.”
Then he started getting pictures of women in bikinis in various states of raunchy repose. So many that Nichols told the sender, “You need to stop.” Finally came the day in August when Nichols was at a softball tournament and his phone started “blowing up off the hook.” Photos of women with lips pursed. Texts that said “Love you,” and “Happy Birthday.” A photo of a bottle of “Big Bottom” whiskey. More women. More lips and kisses. And one telltale reference to the 1992 rap hit “Baby Got Back.”
No way, Nichols thought. After the tournament, he and his friends Googled Seattle hip-hop legend Sir Mix-A-Lot. His real name? Anthony Ray. His birthday? Aug. 12. That very day. “That’s when it all made sense,” Nichols, 33, said one recent afternoon. The phone number he had picked out at the Verizon store just because it was easy to remember had a previous owner no one could forget: Sir Mix-A-Lot, the man behind “Baby Got Back,” “Posse on Broadway” and founder of Rhyme Cartel Records.
“Are you serious?” Mix said when I called him — on his new number — to tell him about Nichols. “That is hilarious. Poor fella.” What would he have told Nichols before the technological torch was passed? “Don’t check any text messages in front of your wife,” Mix advised. “That would be the first thing. And don’t answer any texts by saying ‘Yes,’ because people take ‘Yes’ differently with me. And usually you end up opening your wallet.”
Man am I jealous of this kid. He has been given a lottery ticket in life. Okay, maybe not a lottery ticket but a decent scratch off ticket winner for $100 or so. Because having the old phone number of a rapper must be pretty awesome. I mean Kanye’s phone number would be infinitely more entertaining to have these days, but at least Sir Mix-A-Lot is still getting pics from girls. And getting a bunch of sexts from random floozies is the American dream. House, white picket fence, 2 kids, a dog, and a litany of messages from bikini-clad chicks in sexy poses that could melt your phone. Sure calls from auto dealers and stuff is annoying, but we all get flooded with telemarketers. I even have some asshole that apparently doesn’t give his phone number’s area code to people, so they mistakenly call my fancy 914 number instead of his ghetto 917 number. I knew I should have looked to see if 1-900-MIXALOT was available when I upgraded to the iPhone 6s.
Semi-related story. When I was a freshman in college, I had a random girl call my room and start talking dirty to me, which led to basically phone sex. And by basically phone sex I mean she talked dirty for like two minutes and I was done. I got a few more calls out of the blue for the rest of the semester and every time it was awesome. Now did my excitement crash when other guys in the dorm said it was probably a dude that sounded like a chick? Kinda. But I imagine I had unknowingly dealt with much worse in my old cyber days in AOL chat rooms and it was still a nice little treat out of the blue. So this kid should feel blessed that this phone number and these random texting chicks (that are definitely chicks and not dudes) fell from the heavens and into his lap.