Soon after Jonathan Nichols enrolled in law school at Seattle University, he started getting offers for backstage passes, calls from luxury-car dealerships, and raunchy texts from strangers. “There were some girls in really short shorts and skimpy tops, obviously turned around showing their butts. And they’d say ‘I know you love us: because we got a big butt,'” Nichols says.

No, the messages weren’t inspired by Nichols’ attendance at Seattle’s second-best law school. It turns out Nichols had purchased a new phone, with a local number, when he moved to Seattle. That number had previously belong to Sir Mix-A-Lot, the Seattle rapper best known for the 1992 hit “Baby Got Back.”

Even White Boys Got to Shout

When Nichols moved to Seattle from El Paso, Texas, he wanted a 212 number to help him pass as a local during his job search. (Not a bad idea, Nichols.) But when he went to the Verizon store, he didn’t get just any number. He got Sir Mix-A-Lot’s old digits. Along with that came a bevy of unsolicited texts, photos, and invitations.

The first text simply asked Nichols to “check out this guy,” with a link to a rapper’s YouTube video. “That’s pretty cool,” Nichols texted back, according to The Seattle Times. “But you clearly have the wrong number.”

Things escalated from there. The texts kept coming, including “pictures of women in bikinis in various state of raunchy repose” and invitations to concerts and offers of free backstage passes.

Nichols did a bit of Googling and soon found out why his phone was so constantly blowing it. The number used to be Mix’s.

Homeboys Tried to Warn Me

Sir Mix-A-Lot was equally amused when a Seattle Times reporter told him of the mix up. “Are you serious?” he asked. “That is hilarious. Poor fella.”

But he also had some words of wisdom:

Don’t check any text messages in front of your wife. 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.

For his part, Nichols, who now works as a public interest attorney with Seattle’s Moriarty and Associates, hasn’t abused his new number, the Times reports. “My boyfriend tells me, ‘Yeah! Get tickets! Get backstage passes!’ But ‘no false representations‘ is one of the rules of the bar.”

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