-A lot of the iconic songs break the rules.
-It's all about feel at the end of the day.
-So I heard a melody first.
It was just this beat
that had, like, an "Eleanor Rigby" sample on it.
My friend comes in, and he's like,
"Yo, stop the music," boom.
"Yo I was with this girl last night
and guess what she gave me." I was like, "What?
What did she give you?" And he was like,
"That thong, th-thong, thong, thong,"
just like that.
♪ That dress so scandalous ♪
♪ And you know another...can't handle it ♪
♪ So you shakin' that thing like who's the ish ♪
♪ With a look in your eyes so devilish ♪
-I'm, like, literally writing the song,
talking about the date that I was on.
-How can I show my mom talking about some things, man?
-♪ She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck ♪
-You got dumps like a truck? What, are you kidding me?
-That's it. We got it. It's a hit. That's a smash.
-Say it one time and make your life easier.
"Thong Song" took over the world.
-It was all about the "Thong Song"
and it was all about that video.
-♪ That thong, th-thong, thong, thong ♪
-And then we get that call from my lawyer,
like, "Have a seat. If you're standing up,
You might want to take a seat,"
and I'm like, "Oh, my God, please, no."
-And then the negotiations started.
-Here we go. Lawsuit.
-"Thong Song" journey was a journey.
It was a whirlwind.
[ Cheering ]
With the good comes the bad.
-It was crazy.
[ Laughs ]
This is really what happened,
I shit you not.
-♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Unh ♪
♪ Baby, that thong ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Make some noise!
[ Cheers and applause ]
-I'm Sisqó, AKA the Dragon.
♪♪
I grew up in Baltimore, you know, the inner city,
pretty rough, kind of grew up with one foot, like, in the hood
and the other foot kind of in a suburb.
At about four or five,
Michael Jackson comes on TV singing "Billie Jean."
And when he did the moonwalk, I felt like the world stopped.
That was the moment that I said, "You know what?
I think that's what I want to do."
Dru Hill and I became a group way back when
we were like 14 years old.
At the time, I was working at a place called The Fudgery.
We, like, made fudge and sang songs.
It's really funny because I'm short,
so it's like -- I was like a Keebler elf.
So -- [ Laughs ]
And once I turned 17, a business associate of ours
asked us to come and sing for Hiriam Hicks,
who was running Island Black Music at the time.
He wanted to sign us.
It was like, "Okay, fudge, record deal,
fudge, record deal -- I don't know.
I'm don't know, I think I'll go with the record deal."
So we signed with Def Jam and we had the song "Tell Me."
That first single we put out went platinum,
and every commercial release
after that was either platinum and multi-platinum.
At the peak of our success,
and we just about to go to the next level
and one of the guys drop out.
Woody decided he didn't want to be in the group anymore.
We have to release some new music,
but I didn't think Dru Hill was the answer.
I told the group, "Hey, guys, I want to go do a solo album.
And when I do, hopefully it'll buy Woody
some time to figure out what he want to do
and he can come back to the group."
-When Sisqó decided that he wanted to go solo,
he was in a successful group, Dru Hill,
they were doing well, you know,
but it wasn't about the solo career.
Sisqó, to me, it's about he's a creative person.
He wants to do things that people say he can't do
or he wants to try things, like, with his hair or his clothes.
It was his way of being himself
without people telling him he can't do it.
-It didn't make sense to anybody for me to do a solo album
because the brand Dru Hill was lucrative at the time.
-The record company wanted another Dru Hill project.
At the time, they were like, "Okay, let's let him do
a solo project. Hopefully it won't fail,
and let's get back to Dru Hill."
-I put up my own money to record "Unleash the Dragon."
I just faced my fears and pushed forward.
-So before you know it, we're full fledged on
into the Sisqó project.
♪♪
-1999, me and my producer partner, Tim Kelly,
we were carving our own path
because we had worked with so many artists.
We working on Usher, we working on Joe.
We were working on Boyz II Men.
-Kenneth Crear, he calls us,
he was like, "I'm managing Sisqó,
we about to do a solo project."
Like, "Oh, wow."
-At that time, they were considered
one of the top five producers in the business.
But their -- their hits were coming from R&B.
-When people came to us, usually they came
for mids or slows, you know what I'm saying?
Like slow jams. -You know, and it was funny,
people didn't think R&B producers could do pop music.
-At the time, me and Tim, we basically
were in a creative space
thinking about Michael Jackson a lot.
We knew we eventually wanted to get on Mike's album,
so we were doing a lot of ideas that were out of the box
from the normal things people heard us do.
So that was creatively this new sound we were trying to forge
before we were even in touch with Sisqó.
At the time, Tim was sampling a lot of Wes Montgomery,
which is where the original sample
from "Thong Song" came from.
-Ta-da! Wes Montgomery.
It was his version of Eleanor Rigby,
obviously from The Beatles.
-I started off with just this.
[ "Eleanor Rigby" plays ]
That's all I heard, just that part,
and I just kept looping it.
Next thing I know, he's adding the kick in.
[ Drum beats play ]
And then he starts adding in, you know, the percussions in
and the hi-hats, like, "Whoa, wait a minute."
[ Percussive beats playing ]
"Oh, this is gonna be sick. Wait a minute."
And I could hear it just resonating through the walls.
I'm like, "Are you serious? That's gonna be sick."
[ Beats playing together ]
So then I go upstairs.
[ Beats playing with "Eleanor Rigby" ]
We both just sitting there listening to it,
going crazy, like -- It didn't need anything else.
-So I just did that. Just real simple.
Before you know it, I had the beat.
-It just sounded very urgent.
You knew that it was a game changer.
But again, we're thinking Michael Jackson.
At the time, we wasn't thinking Sisqó.
-Burnt it to a CD and I left it alone.
I went to the next song.
Three, four months later, Kenneth Carter was like,
"Sisqó want to meet with y'all, man.
His album's done. He just want to see what y'all got."
-We have made a compilation of songs for Sisqó.
A lot of them were ballads, one R&B vein of Dru Hill,
and probably is about 20 tracks on there.
And the track that had the "Eleanor Rigby" sample in it,
it literally was accidentally
put with the bundle of songs that we sent them.
-When we met with Sisqó,
I rewound the DAT. Soon as I pressed play,
I realized this is that track.
It was the first one on the DAT,
and I did it for Mike.
Oh, my -- I was the only one that came in.
Sisqó was like, "Yo, man, what is that?"
-And it was just this beat
that had, like, an "Eleanor Rigby" sample on it.
-So then I heard from him -- "Ah, man, you know what?
That was nothing. That was just nothing."
Click, and I went to the next one.
So we got the music loud and he's like...
He's over there, "Go back to the first one, man."
-And I'm just grooving like, "Yo, this is --
this is ill. Like, this is the magic.
Like, something about this is, like, dope."
-A song like that could be what you need to finish the album.
-I was like, "I'mma be honest with you.
I knew we were coming out here,
so I did a batch of tracks for Mike.
This was one of them."
"Oh, man. Come on, man. Come on, man.
I was like, "I'm being honest. That's -- That's what I did."
He was like, "Alright, man. Well, you know what?
Just send me those ones that you showed me.
I still like them. I love those."
I was like, "Okay, cool."
He gets on a plane, go back to Baltimore.
My cellphone rings. It's Sisqó. Sisqó's on the airplane now.
Right? He's like, "Yo, man, Tim, I got to have that, man.
How much -- How much money you want, man?
I'm serious, man. Like, if you say I can have that,
when I land, I'mma jump on another plane and come back."
And then I'm like, "Really?"
If an artist like a song or track that much,
we got to give it to them, man, even though
we had it for somebody else,
and he already heard it on top of that.
I messed up and played it, but I'm like,
"Alright, Sisqó, man, you got it."
Next day we in the studio.
-When Sisqó came back to LA to record it,
that's when the track was ready, but there's no song.
There was no lyrics. But Sisqó's writing,
trying to figure it out. -So I heard the melody first,
but the words didn't really click.
So I had a date that night. We get back to the crib,
so we making out, and I'm rounding second base.
She decides she wants to get up and strip.
It's the first time I had ever seen a thong,
and it was glorious. [ Chuckles ]
I'm like literally writing the song,
talking about the date that I was on.
"Dress was so scandalous,
you know them other guys can't handle this."
This is, like, real life.
The next day, my friends come over,
I tell them, "Gather around.
This girl had on a thong.
And they was like, "A what now?"
Needless to say, all my boys was like -- literally, like.
on a pilgrimage, like, you know, "Lord of the Rings"
or whatever to go find a thong. Right?
This is really what happened. I shit you not.
And so when I get to the chorus, I didn't know what I should say.
My friend comes in and he's like, "Yo,
stop the music," boom.
"Yo, I was with this girl last night
and guess what she gave me." I was like, "What?
What did she give you?" And he was like,
"That thong, th-thong, thong, thong," just like that.
I was like, "Yo, what if right there I was like --
What if I said 'That thong, th-thong, thong, thong'?"
They was like, "Haha, that's funny.
You would never do it."
I was like, "I think I'mma do that.
I think I'mma say that."
By the time I got to that part,
everybody in the room said it with me, like,
"Thong, th-thong, thong, thong."
I was like, "Look, it works! We got it, yo.
It's a hit. That's a smash. That's it."
-It's funny because Tim calls me
and I hear the music going in the back and he's like,
"Hey, Pop, man,
guess what the name of the song is."
And I said, "What?" He said, "Thong Song."
I said, "'Thong Song,' really?" -[ Laughs ]
I was like, "How can I show my mom?
I'm talking about some thongs, man."
-We definitely had some reservations in the beginning.
So me and Tim, we've always been 100%-ers,
meaning we did all the music and we also wrote all the lyrics,
did all the vocal arrangements, everything.
Here comes Sisqó. He's like,
"Alright, I got this. I got this.
I want to do this like this," and we were like, "Whoa."
-The "Eleanor Rigby" sample was a hurdle for me.
"Eleanor Rigby" is "Eleanor Rigby."
This song needs its own music. I was like, "Y'all, I'm gonna
rewrite the string line," so I hired some people
that played on "Star Wars" to play the string line.
[ Playing violin ]
-My name is Bruce Dukov. I'm a violinist
in the studios in California,
and I've done to this date over 1,800 feature motion pictures,
not to mention television films and other things.
And I'm the violinist on the "Thong Song."
I got the call from Def Jam Records
to do this session for Sisqó.
Of course, I didn't know who Sisqó was.
I went to that studio. Sisqó was there.
Can't remember what color his hair was,
but it was different. [ Laughs ]
So they played me a track,
and it was very "Eleanor Rigby"-like.
And then he was humming a part
and he wanted me to play as an obbligato,
and I thought, "Something like this kind of sound?
You want to have a"...
[ Plays violin ]
And he said, "Yeah, that's exactly what I want to do."
Then I said, "Well, what do you want to have as a punch for it?"
He was going, "You know, like a [vocalizing]"
So I said, "What about..."
[ Plays violin ]
And that's all going underneath, you know.
[ Plays violin ]
So this is basically what you hear.
♪♪
-When I first heard it, I'm not gonna lie, man,
I was like, "That don't even sound like my track now, man.
The drums and all that do, man,"
but at the same time, I'm not scared of change.
I'm like, "Okay, if y'all want it, okay, cool."
-Sisqó came up with an idea for a key change
to modulate a half-step up halfway through the song.
-It creates a powerful dynamic in the song
when there's a modulation
because it's like something is the same,
but something is different. Well, it's different
because the key of the song has risen.
-I did everything I could to that part to make that climax
just really, really feel epic.
It was almost sexual in nature.
Ohh, yes! Yeah, yeah!
-So I'm listening to the hook and I'm like,
"Okay, I'm still trying to work with this saying thong."
-♪ Yeah ♪ -It's hot, though.
I can't -- I can't even front him in my mind.
I'm like, "It's dope."
-♪ Baby, that thong ♪
♪ I said I like the way ♪
-I got to give it up to him. It worked.
It worked incredibly.
So after we turned in the final mixes to Def Jam,
that's when we find out that they had went
with "Got to Get It" as Sisqó's first single.
It was interesting because at the same time,
all the deejays were like, "'Thong Song' is the one.
That's the one you need to go with."
And then, I want to say, by like the third week
into working his first single, they pulled the plug,
and like, "We got to go directly to 'Thong Song.'"
That's the thing that forced it
to become the single were the deejays.
-Everybody just started playing it.
And once you got the pop radio playing it,
you know, radio is everything.
-Once they heard it, it was, like, automatic.
Like, we did not have to ask anybody to do anything.
-Song became so huge that you couldn't get away from it.
-I just remember that some friends of mine
heard a song like that and they said,
"Did you hear that 'Thong Song'?
It's got this great violin thing going on it?"
And I said, "No, I haven't heard it."
And it dawned on me, maybe that's the song that I did.
[ Cheering ]
-"Thong Song" took over the world.
"Thong Song" took over radio.
"Thong Song" took over the album.
You forgot about the first single.
It was all about the "Thong Song,"
and it was all about that video.
-♪ This thing right here ♪
We couldn't show thongs at that time in the video.
I said, "What if we showed the thongs upside down?
So technically, you not looking at a thong,
but you are. -They made it as racy
as they could back in '99.
"You got dumps like a truck." What, are you kidding me?
-Wait, let's be clear. When I said dumps like a truck,
I did not mean anything about poop.
Like, you know, when a dump truck backs up
like, "Beep, beep, beep."
That's what I was thinking. Like, you know,
she's backing that ass up like a dump truck.
♪ Dumps like a truck, truck, truck ♪
I kind of had, like, my own idea
of what the video should be.
I saw this thing on "Bugs Bunny."
Elmer Fudd was chasing Bugs Bunny,
and it was, like, literally
running on top of people's heads.
I was like, "Yo, I have to do that."
♪ Let me see that thong ♪
They even got this meme -- "Jesus walked on water,
but Sisqó walked on bitches."
[ Laughs ]
That's blasphemous and true. [ Laughs ]
♪ That thong, th-thong, thong, thong ♪
-So the "Thong Song" is going crazy,
it's, like, killing the airwaves,
and then, you know,
we get that call from my lawyer like, "Have a seat."
If you're standing up, you might want to take a seat."
You know, that's when all the drama started.
-I get a call from Def Jam and they're like,
"Hey, we've got a problem here." "What's the problem?"
Well, there's a potential lawsuit from Ricky Martin
because we stole the interpretation of
"Because you 'Livin' la Vida Loca.'"
-♪ Because she was "Livin' la Vida Loca" ♪
-When he said that, I went back
and I remember, I'm like, "Sisqó, man.
Got to clear that."
-Sisqó had assured us like, "Oh,
I've got a relationship with Desmond Child
who wrote 'Livin' la Vida Loca' for Ricky Martin.
We good. That's a phone call."
-Here we go. Lawsuit.
-And then the negotiations started.
You know, we went back and forth for how much they thought
they should get for the song.
-And all of a sudden, like,
you start seeing your publishing checks going...
-Desmond Child has more ownership
of the song than anyone. I'll just put it like that.
And I'm sure Sisqó didn't purposely say, "You know what?
No, I'm not gonna clear that." But somewhere along the line,
there was definitely an oversight.
-As a manager, nobody came to me and said,
"Can you get this cleared?" And then nobody at Def Jam --
because you got to have your music go through
all the licensing department, so I guess nobody noticed it.
I really couldn't tell you who's at fault.
-We just gonna have to take the "L" on this one, like,
we just got to -- we got to pay them for that.
So we paid them. So everybody -- everybody
that has something to do with it
got their piece of the song.
[ Laughs ]
♪♪
The legacy of the "Thong Song"
is introducing the world to thongs, yo.
That song was more than just the thong.
The fact that my hair was silver and I had on
this, like, leather clothes and the dragon
and flying around in my videos.
And then you got, like, artists today who dyeing their hair
every color of the rainbow
and just expressing themselves in different ways.
-You can't explain when songs go that big like that,
that put us in a different bubble of producers.
-After "Thong Song" came out, like, in the midst
of all the craziness, John McClain call us,
and he said, "I'm calling you
under the instructions of Michael Jackson.
He wanted me to call you guys and to tell you," and I quote,
"If you can give me something hotter than 'Thong Song,'
meet me at this address."
And it was addressed to his recording studio.
Coming full circle to end up
that we actually get the call from Michael Jackson
because he loved the "Thong Song,"
and it was like -- it was amazing.
That's the beauty of when you're on a path,
you don't know where you're going to end up.
And that's where all the good stuff is, it's in the journey.
-Sisqó, the more I think about it, man, dude,
that was fun recording this song."
-I don't include everything in my bio,
but along with Sinatra and Streisand,
with whom I worked, the "Thong Song"
is mentioned in my bio.
-I already had a huge amount of respect for Sisqó,
but through the recording process of this song,
I definitely saw, like, "Okay,
he's absolutely forging his own path."
-The "Thong Song," it changed everything.
It changed people's lives.
It changed his life, changed my life.
It changed the perception of a young Black kid
in inner city Baltimore who could go out
and become something.
-It's cool that people still dig the record.
And they still go nuts over it, too,
every time we sing it live.
Do I ever get tired of singing "Thong Song"?
And nah, dude. It's the "Thong Song."
[ Laughs ] ♪ Connect the dots ♪
♪ Not just urban, she like the pop ♪
♪ 'Cause she was "Livin' la Vida Loca" ♪
♪ She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck ♪
♪ Thighs like what, what, what ♪
♪ Baby, move your butt, butt, butt ♪
♪ I think I'll sing it again ♪
My wife had the thong back in 1976.
She made her own thongs, and that was like,
"I have to marry this woman." [ Laughs ]
I like thongs. What can I tell you?
[ Laughs ]
-♪ She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck ♪
♪ Thighs like what, what, what ♪
♪ Baby, move your butt, butt, butt ♪
-My wife had the thong back in 1976.
She made her own thongs, and that was like,
"I have to marry this woman." [ Laughs ]
I like thongs. What can I tell you?
[ Laughs ]