We bow down in praise for Sir Mix-A-Lot and his oh-so-bouncy-beats, so we were nicely surprised to find this interview on The Onion of all places. The Onion: On your first album, you did a song with Metal Church. How did people in Seattle respond to that? Sir Mix-A-Lot: Well, they didn't like it. [Laughs.] In retrospect, I really don't like that song, and I'm very honest about why: It was an obvious attempt at trying to capitalize on what Run DMC was doing. When things are that obvious, they're kind of cheesy, and I wish I hadn't done it. But you learn from it. I love rock, though. Now, more so than then. I'm going to do a rock album, but it won't be that kind of shit. It'll be a rock-remix album. O: That was one of the first rap-rock songs after "Walk This Way," wasn't it? SM: It was. "King Of Rock" was a big deal, but I wanted to do something harder, metal stuff. I love heavy metal, hard shit. I'm the guy you see at Ozzfest. I wanted to do something a lot harder, but at that time, I think it was a little disrespectful to hip-hop, and a little disrespectful to rock. Run DMC could do it, but I don't think anybody else at that time should have been doing it. O: How did you hook up with Def American? SM: That's a funny one. I was coming to the end of the road with NastyMix. We were in a nasty lawsuit. I felt like I had nowhere to go. I thought it was over, actually. Then we get a call from someone who worked for Rick Rubin. He was like, "Rick's very interested in signing you. Would you like to come down and meet him?" I'm like, "Rick Rubin!" He was a legend to me. I got on a plane and went down to L.A. to meet with him. I was a little concerned, because I had heard rumors about him being a control freak, which is not true. He's not a control freak, but when he doesn't like something, he'll tell you about it. I met with him and he saw things in Mix-A-Lot that I never saw. I'll give you one example. He showed me silhouettes of different rappers. He pulls out the first one, and it's a cat with a sideways hat and a big clock on it. I say, "That's Flavor Flav." He pulls out another one of a guy with a forward baseball cap and a fist in the air. I say, "That's Chuck D." He pulls out another one and another one, and I go, "That's Eazy-E. That's N.W.A." But then, when he pulled out one of me, I didn't know who it was. So he's like, "Dude, you know what your problem is? You don't have an image yet. You don't have something that's you." So we looked back at all my old videos, and we watched one I had done called "My Hooptie." He was like, "This is you, the mack-daddy hat. You need to quit dumbing down the pimp thing." That's how I used to dress back when I was in the game. He was like, "Use it. Use the hats. Use the furs. Be obnoxious with it." He helped me find myself. Even though we totally disagree about where I'm going musically right now... He wants me to keep doing booty songs, and I'm trying to move on, but he is the reason I ended up being what I was. Full text  here.