When SisQó competed as the Lizard on The Masked Singer this week, there were no thong clues. "The Masked Singer is a family show! Nobody's trying see something about some women's underwear!" he laughs, speaking to Music Times from London, where his "boy band" Dru Hill just performed at Wembley's OVO Arena.
But even without such an obvious tipoff, and even when SisQó was singing seemingly off-brand songs by the Who, Billy Joel, and Evanescence, new Masked Singer judge Rita Ora — who was totally "fangirling out" over the Lizard's reveal — recognized his voice straight away. Her fellow sharp-eared judge Robin Thicke also guessed correctly, because, SisQó assumes, "they're musicians as well."
SisQó is no stranger to musical genre-hopping, of course. He competed on Gone Country, CMT's top-rated show at the time, in 2008 (his co-stars included future Masked Singer contestants Bobby Brown, Dee Snider, and Carnie Wilson), and he recorded a country song with the Donny "The Peacock" Osmond's sister, Marie Osmond, in 2016. He even has fans in the rock world, like Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, who out of nowhere ruminated about "Thong Song's" enduring appeal by recently tweeting, "The great thing about The Thong Song is you can really feel his earnest yearning to see that thong."
the great thing about The Thong Song is you can really feel his earnest yearning to see that thong
— Flea (@flea333) November 10, 2023
"Actually, I loved that. I think I retweeted that," SisQó laughs. "Shout-out to the Chili Peppers and Flea, because we've been on a couple of shows together back in the day, on some of those festivals and stuff, and man, I've just always been a fan of their music and their vibe. ... For me, it's always been about the music ... My favorite genre of music is classical, so I've always done the best that I can to kind of blur the lines between these different genres."
While some might assume that SisQó's racy signature song was just a Y2K novelty hit, one that inspired millions of millennials to expose their panty straps 20 years ago and now inspires amusing random tweets from veteran alt-rockers, SisQó points out: "It's funny, because that song is complex simplicity. It's way more complicated than it seems. It's a lot of musical changes. It's live instruments. There's a modulation, so when I came up with the song, I kept all of the verses the same to keep it simple, so that all the complexity in the back wouldn't overwhelm the air. ... Those string players for 'Thong Song,' I hired them from Star Wars... that's why they were so precise that it sounds like a sample. But that's live."
As it turns out, the obbligato strings on this ode to G-strings were initially "a whole sample of 'Eleanor Rigby'" — specifically a sample of jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery's cover of the Beatles' ballad. But SisQó had learned the hard way, two years earlier when working with R&B star Mya, about the risks of sampling. That's why he eventually enlisted Bruce Dukov to play the "Thong Song" violin parts, even if "when you're doing uptempos, it's difficult to keep [the strings] as syncopated as you need to be."
"The first platinum single that I wrote for somebody outside of my boy band was Mya; I wrote her first two singles [1998's "It's All About Me" and "Movin' On"]. And somebody messed up in the studio and left a sample [of the Art of Noise's "Moments in Love"] in ["It's All About Me"]. When we sent the song to go get mastered, they left the sample in there and I had no idea that it was in there," SisQó claims. "So, once the song hit platinum, the writers of the original song that was sampled came after us and took 99.9 percent of the record. Needless to say, from that moment forward, I was like, 'I'm never sampling again!' Plus, I didn't want to have to pay [Beatles catalog owner] Michael Jackson for the 'Thong Song'!"
Ironically, a 2021 Vice documentary shockingly revealed that "Thong Song's" brief use of Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca" — an interpolation, not a sample — resulted in Martin's two songwriters, Desmond Child and Robi Draco Rosa, receiving a significant portion of "Thong Song's" royalties. But SisQó's breakthrough hit did lead to a friendship between Jackson (for whom "Thong Song" was surprisingly originally intended) and SisQó, and Jackson doled out some sound advice that helped the Dru Hull star take control of his future solo career.
SisQó recalls that Jackson flew him out for a meeting in 2001, when the "Thong Song" was all the rage. "We hung out over the weekend, and man, I was like, 'Dude, you're the reason why a lot of R&B and pop male artists, we're all doing our best. What made you want to meet me?' And he was like, 'I think you're really talented and you're going to go far in the industry.' And that's when I 'disappeared,'" SisQó self-deprecatingly laughs. "That was my mic-drop moment. You recall, it was like 2001 — and then I disappeared.
"You have to learn how to play the game, the music industry game. It is a delicate balance between respect and disrespect and ego and confidence, and you got to know how to balance that, when to turn it on, when to turn it off. But let me just put it this way: It's not ironic that for over the past 15 years, artists have been saying they want to own their masters. I'll leave it at that."
As it turns out, SisQó's new friend Jackson advised him to retain ownership of his masters. "I learned it from Michael Jackson and Prince and Ray Charles, and [other artists] learned it from me, and [music executives] was like, 'We need to shush him. Somebody gotta shush him!'" says SisQó, who has long claimed that he was "blacklisted" in the industry.
Prince, with whom Dru Hill shared an attorney, offered SisQó the same career advice, when SisQó asked him about the possibility of a collaboration. "The conversation was, 'Hey Prince, can we do a song together?' And he was like, 'Hey SisQó, do you own your masters?' I was like, 'No.' And he was like, 'Holler at me when you do,'" SisQó recalls with a chuckle. "But it never happened, because by the time I was owning my masters, that was kind of around the time that I started hanging out with Michael Jackson, and I think they had kind of frenemy kind of relationship. So, there you go."
SisQó says he's "been in the dragon's lair over the past several years, because by me owning my own masters, after I got to a certain point in my life, I wasn't really into the whole [show business scene]." But after cosplaying as the Lizard on TV, he's inspired to unleash the dragon again, so to speak.
"They say that the industry is for younger artists because it's a lot of just rigorous work that you have to do in order to pull it off," says the 45-year-old husband and father. "I was basically just getting back to the singing portion of it. ... And then when this came along, this opportunity with The Masked Singer, I learned so much from the show that almost immediately after I left the show, I told my team, 'Hey man, I think I want to put out some new music!' And I literally just started."
SisQó reveals that he's preparing two new EPs — the sequels to 2019's Genesis, which will be titled Exodus and Revelation — and "soon as the heat breaks, I've got a lot of success with putting music out when the weather breaks, so right around late spring/early summer, you should be hearing something." And he's even working with Mya again. With the current Y2K revival, the timing might be ideal for his comeback, although SisQó admits he is not so thrilled about the return of TRL-era fashion trends.
"Yeah, my bad for everybody's hair being dyed blond! I apologize!" he quips. "I was happy when [early-aughts fashions] left, man! I looked at some of the stuff from back then and I'm like, 'Lord!' The big, giant, oversized clothes and stuff? Yeah, I'm good."
SisQó probably would be OK with a thong renaissance, however. While the popularity of the skimpy underwear style has decreased over the years, his 2000 hit caused Victoria's Secret's thong sales to spike a reported 80 percent back in the day. And he has an admitted fondness for the visible-thong fad that has slowly started to come back.
"When I hosted the MTV Movie Awards with Beyoncé [in 2000], you would think that I would remember the Beyoncé part. But I remember that Halle Berry showed up, and she had her thong showing," SisQó says with a smile. "And I'm standing next to Beyoncé, and Halle's like, 'Hiiii, SisQó...' and I'm like, 'Hiiii, Halle...' It was a moment. It was a moment! I actually put her name in a song that I wrote called 'A-List.' She was with [then-husband] Eric Benet that day, though, and I'm cool with him.
"But we had a moment. We locked eyes."
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