As far as many of his younger fans are concerned, Sir Mix-A-Lot might as well just have one song.

The Seattle rapper — born Anthony Ray — is well aware of the cultural touchstone his biggest hit, “Baby Got Back,” has become in the years since its release in 1992. Ray’s dance-floor ode to large female posteriors has been featured or mentioned in everything from “Shrek” to “Futurama” to “Glee” — most recently, rapper Nicki Minaj sampled multiple lines of the song in her track “Anaconda” — and has become a staple of parties and weddings across the country.

Far from complaining about being a one-hit wonder, Ray still revels in the fame “Baby Got Back” has afforded him, and the opportunities it continues to present.

“I think artists who have songs as big as ‘Baby Got Back’ and complain about the fact that that’s what they’re known by should be shot in the head and buried face down; I think that’s the dumbest thing in the world,” Ray said recently while running errands near his home in Auburn, Washington. “When people start this game at 16 or whatever, all of us — in my case, I was 17 years old — you pray for one of those kind of songs.”

Expect that song, and a heaping dose of Ray’s other late ’80s and early ’90s hip-hop hits, from “Posse on Broadway” to “My Hooptie,” when the rapper headlines the 25th Bank of the Cascades Bend Summer Festival on Saturday.

“I think it’s a blessing Nicki (Minaj) did (‘Anaconda’),” Ray said. “It’s a cool thing; it’s cool to have a song that becomes part of Americana. It’s not quite as big as ‘Hotel California,’ but in hip-hop, it’s part of Americana. … You should be happy with a big hit, I think, unless you’re ashamed of its content. If I did ‘Gangnam Style,’ it might be a little different.”

According to promoter C3 Events, Ray was booked in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the festival. The rapper said he prefers playing smaller markets such as Bend, and thanks to numerous licensing deals with Target, Butterfinger and films such as “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Ray can be choosy about the gigs he accepts.

“You go up and you have fun. I love markets like this; I prefer them to San Francisco, I prefer them to Los Angeles,” Ray said.

“In secondary markets, people go (to shows) to have fun, have a good time.”

Also, expect to dance, especially during “Baby Got Back,” when Ray invites women in the audience onstage. It’s a tradition at all his shows, and even occurred when Ray performed with the Seattle Symphony in June last year as part of the symphony’s Sonic Evolution series, which commissions orchestral works inspired by Seattle musicians.

Ray’s performance with the symphony was perhaps more off-the-cuff than what the orchestra was used to.

“I was looking out into the crowd before we came out to do ‘Posse,’ Ray said. “Even people who were young enough (to remember the song) were sitting there with a glass of wine reading sheet music. I thought, ‘Oh, no, this is not gonna work.’ We didn’t have much of a rehearsal. … I didn’t know what to expect. Keep in mind, I was working with accomplished musicians, all very serious. But everything was organic, the musicians got into it, girls were dancing — these girls who five minutes earlier, you would have thought they were complete prudes.”

While Ray has no problem trotting out old hits on the road, he’s not resting on his laurels when it comes to new music. Ray is working on his first studio album since 2003’s “Daddy’s Home,” and is looking at different options to release the album other than a standard physical release.

“What I don’t want to do is put out a record and wait for some mystical, magical hand of Warner Brothers. That doesn’t even work,” Ray said. “What I’d like to do is create a project and have a cool way of releasing it — maybe by live streaming the process, the building of the track, and then giving it away for nothing, something like that. Just to have fun with it.”

A song slated for the album, “Buddy,” was released toward the end of 2014 as a planned marketing tie-in with Microsoft, which fell through. Ray says he has written about 35 to 40 songs since the release of “Daddy’s Home.”

“I’m constantly doing new music, though not for reasons most would believe,” Ray said. “I don’t really release songs to make it big, like, yeah, I want to sell records. For some reason, hip-hop is date coded — if you’re over 35, you’re not supposed to do music anymore. Yet why is it nobody tells Mick Jagger he can’t make rock records anymore? It’s a double standard hip-hop has imposed on itself.”

There’s still more unreleased Sir Mix-A-Lot music that has been making the rounds on Youtube and music-sharing sites, including a full album Ray recorded with Seattle band The Presidents of the United States of America in 1999. The project, known as Subset, is in keeping with past rock collaborations Ray did with fellow Seattlites Metal Church (a reimagined version of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” from the rapper’s 1988 debut album, “Swass”) and Mudhoney (“Freak Momma,” a track from the 1993 “Judgement Night” soundtrack).

“We did this album, and (PUSA) said if I ever want to put it out, I can, and I think I’m gonna do it,” Ray said. “It’s the same thing (as the other collaborations), totally organic, and why? Because I love rock. When I was a kid, I remember the early days of new wave; I was really into a lot of punk, like Circle Jerks, Ramones, the B-52s.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7814, bmcelhiney@bendbulletin.com