He’s gone quadruple platinum, hosted his own MTV dance show, and landed a dramatic roll in a major motion picture. So what does the thong-loving “Dragon” want next?
Sisqó’s Not Kidding
“When I ask for some water, they’ll bring it on their knees.”
Members of the hip-hop and R&B communities like talking about “keeping it real,” but as chart sensation Sisqo nestles into a plush office chair at the studio of Tampa Bay station WFLZ-FM, reality is far from anyone’s mind. This is all about self-promotion and boosting ratings. It’s 1 P.M., and a frat-boyish deejay named Cane is guiding the 24-year-old urban pop star through some standard plugs. Sisqo shifts into hyped-up radio mode and lets fly with the speed of an auctioneer:
“Yo, what’s up! This is Sisqo the Dragon on 93.3 FLZ, Tampa’s hit music channel. Everybody out there, the Dragon’s breathing fire right now, so watch him. Whooosh!”
Seven hours from now, the diminutive singer will storm the stage at Tampa’s Ice Palace, undulating, cartwheeling, vogueing, and crooning his way through a theatrical 30-minute set that will blow headliners ‘N Sync out of their Tommy Hilfigers. The show will exude the kind of sexual energy, drama, and pop appeal that has driven the R&B sensation to the top of the charts. For the finale — the ubiquitous “Thong Song” — Sisqo’s bevy of dancing babes, the Six Pack, will strut, pose, and tease, raising the temperature to full boil.
Right now, however the proceedings are about to become truly theatrical, as Cane kicks into standard deejay bluster: “Okay, Sisqó, thanks so much for joining us. We’ll see you back here tonight. That’s right, folks, the Dragon will be guest-hosting after the show, right here on 93.3 FLZ.”
Cane cuts to a commercial, turns away from the mike, and says, “We’re telling everybody that you’re coming back here, and that’s the part we’re gonna lay down right now.”
The smoke and mirrors are all in place. Guest callers are lined up on the switchboard, and the recording tape begins to roll. The born performer takes over without missing a beat: “This is Sisqó, the Dragon! I finally just got offstage, and I’m a little tired. I got the Six Pack here [he doesn’t], and they gain’ chill with us. Well, actually, they’re not goin’ chill because they’re hot, a little greasy, and they’re fondling my man Cane. Man, what are you doing to my girls? Why are they not talking today?”
“They’re not talking because they’ re hell-bent on getting me all worked up. They are greasy, though,” responds the deejay.
Sisqó: “Yeah, they got a lot of nice breasts and [segueing into a line from ‘Thong Song’] ‘dumps like a truck, thighs like … ’ Baby, you gotta get off Cane and go outside because you’re too greasy.”
Cane: “You just want her back for yourself!”
Sisqó: “Yes, Cane, yes! I’m a little jealous, man. You got ‘em over there, fondling your dragon.”
Cane: “They’re yours. What do you mean, They’re leaving with you?”
Sisqó: “You know, you’re right. I shouldn’t hate — I should congratulate. So why don’t we take another call?”
Such repartee continues for the next 30 minutes, with Sisqó fielding fans’ phone (or is that phony?) calls and bombastically ranting about thongs, bootie, Britney Spears, and the size of the Dragon’s “dragon.” It’s just one of three radio appointments Sisqó has scheduled for the day, and between each radio gig, Sisqó gives other interviews on his cell phone (which is color-coordinated to match his signature platinum-dyed hair). To say he’s perpetually “on” is an understatement.
Sisquo doesn’t have a panty fetish, but he does possess an acute instinct for what will sell. “I gotta be number one. Being number two just ain’t enough. That just means I have to be business-oriented to realize how to facilitate the masses. I enjoy my success from time to time, but I never sit back and smell the roses.”
Indeed, Sisqó seems incapable of giving anything but his all. Raunchy rapper Lil’ Kim recalls, “When he was supposed to sing on my new album [on the song ‘How Many Licks?’], he was sick and his throat was really messed up. He was like, ‘All right, all right. I’ll come if y’all can just have some Pepto-Bismol there for me.’ For you to be sick with the runs and to get out of your bed and come all the way in a car from Baltimore to New York just to be on someone’s record … that takes a lot.”
Settling in for lunch at the Radisson Riverwalk Hotel’s restaurant following his radio appearance, Sisqó (ne Mark Althavan Andrews) is much more reserved than when he’s sparring with feisty deejays. He wears a sleeveless tan jean jacket, a plain white muscle T-shirt, and a fisherman’s hat that hides his platinum hair. His Rolex, diamond earrings, and two diamond dragon pendants are far louder than his voice, which is sometimes inaudible from across the table. But he’s still a master of the game.
“I do lots of radio stuff because it’s a good way to communicate with my fans,” he says, digging into a petite portion of delicately glazed salmon. “It’s cool, as long as I don’t have to do it in the morning. But it’s all part of the game. You gotta play the game if you wanna win.”
Ever since “Thong Song” was released to radio, Sisqó has been on a meteoric winning streak. The track reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart early in the year, driving Sisqó’s debut solo album Unleash the Dragon as high as No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart. As of July, the album had gone quadruple platinum, with two more singles and a second video slated for release. In addition, the singer has filmed an ambitious $2.5 mi 11 ion, eight-minute-long video for “Unleash the Dragon” (the video, which costars The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air cutie Tatiana Ali, features Sisqó battling a huge dragon created by Godzilla designer Patrick Tatopoulos). He also has starred in television commercials for Pepsi and McDonald’s; hosted the MTV dance contest series Sisqó’s Shakedown; appeared on albums by DMX as well as Lil’ Kim; recorded a “Thong Song Remix” track and video with Foxy Brown; performed a sold-out headline tour; and landed his first dramatic acting role in the Miramax film Getting Over Allison, in which he plays the friend of the heartbroken lead character.
The romance, which stars Kirsten Dunst, Ben Foster, and Melissa Sagemiller and is slated for a January release, marks a calculated step for Sisqó. “I wanted to do a movie like this first, instead of one of the action or horror movies that I’m pretty sure people expected me to do,” he says. “When you do those types of movies, people don’t really look at you for your acting talent. It’s like, ‘Okay, he’s the hot kid and that’s why they put him in the movie.’ So I figured if I did a movie with more dialogue in it, I could get a chance to really flex my acting skills and start to build my reputation as an actor.”
Chomping on a cheeseburger that follows the salmon he earlier wolfed down in five minutes, Sisqó reveals his long-range goal: “I want people to remember me as a big-time actor like Will Smith,” he says. “He’s been a big, big role model in my life. One of the best pieces of advice he gave me was, ‘Treat every dollar like it’s 50 cents.’ I was all, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Uncle Sam is gonna get close to half of your money at tax time, so if you pretend like you don’t even got the whole dollar, you’ll probably be a lot happier.’”
Smith is more than an inspiration for Sisqó; the actor pointed the lusty thong-lover on the road to riches. In 1996, Sisqó’s soulful ballad-singing quartet Dru Hill scored a double-platinum album with its self-titled debut album. The silky vocals and inviting harmonies intrigued Smith, who asked the foursome to guest-star on his 1997 album Big Willie Style. At the time, Dru Hill was just finishing up its sophomore disc Enter the Dru (also double platinum), and the group turned down Smith’s offer. But the Fresh Prince was persistent, and in 1999 convinced the group to sing on the title cut to the Wild Wild West film sound track.
During the video shoot for the song, Dru member Woody decided to quit the group to become a gospel singer. What easily could have spelled disaster instead turned into Sisqó’s big break. “They had to cut all the Dru Hill shots out shots of me and Will,” he recalls. “The song was a smash hit, and I realized I could either go back and try to get Dru Hill back together or I could put a solo album out while I was hot.”
“Instead of loving the dirty mix of a song, I made myself love the clean mix. And … I made it as close to dirty without going too far.”
Sisqó’s decision to go solo didn’t excite his label, Def Soul, which felt Dru Hill, not Sisqó, was the hot commodity. Def Soul refused to forward him the cash for an album, forcing Sisqó to finance the project himself. “It’s not that I was aching to go solo,” he insists. “I just didn’t want to sell Dru Hill short because we were not together. So I spent $400,000 and went into the red on my bank account, recording almost the whole album. Then I sold it back to Def Jam.”
Upbeat, libidinous, and mischievous, but not at all raunchy, “Thong Song” was embraced by both the R&B underground and the mainstream. But while Sisqó may be as market savvy as Madonna, the inspiration of “Thong Song” was as impulsive as a one-night stand. “My cousin,” he says, “came home from a date and said, ‘Man, I was with this girl, and when she turned around, guess what she gave me?’ We all thought she handed him something, but he said, ‘The girl turned around and gave me that thong-tha-thong-thong-thong.’ We bust out laughing, and for the next two days whenever we saw someone remotely resembling having a thong on, we would sing, ‘Thong-tha-thong-thong-thong.’ And I thought, Man, I need to write a song about this.”
While he doesn’t have a panty fetish, and isn’t even an ass man, Sisqó does possess an acute instinct for what will sell. He realized that a song about — but not explicitly about-thongs and sex could be a chart topper. “I insinuated a lot without saying a lot,” he says. “Like the line, ‘Baby, move your butt’ — that could be sexual or cute. If I said, ‘Baby, shake that ass,’ that’s straight sexual. There’s nothing cute about that. I try to make it so my music could easily have a double meaning…
“I’m trying my best to be a big pop icon without being controversial or corny,” he adds. “So I’m doing my best to straddle that line. Basically, I wanted to be popular, so I learned to love what popular was. Instead of loving the dirty mix of a song, I made myself love the clean mix. And when I did a clean mix, I made it as close as I could to dirty without going too far.”
In fact every move Sisqó makes is aimed at expanding his following while maintaining old-school fans, and he knows how to play to each element of his audience. When he visits black-music WTMP-AM radio station after lunch, he’s more urban and streetwise than he was with the FLZ crowd, firing off vernacular that Cane and company would need a slang dictionary to follow. And when Sisqó collaborates with the likes of Lil’ Kim or DMX, he aims at a grittier, more specialized market than when he records with Will Smith.
At the moment, Sisqó is explaining his approach in a matter-of-fact manner. But when he gets worked up, or is feeling really self-promotional, he metamorphoses Incredible Hulk-style into his superhero-like personality, the Dragon. It is a role he cultivated by watching professional wrestling, and it is as carefully considered as the lyrics in “Thong Song.”
“The first time I saw the Rock, I was blown away,” he says. “He’s got a whole little routine with his sayings and his walk. Every time he comes out, the crowd goes nuts because he’s the Rock, and you know what you’re gonna get when you see the Rock. I wanted people to know what they’re gonna get with Sisqó. So, now, I mimic wrestlers when I do interviews. I also got my idea for the Six Pack, after watching the Laker Girls. When you’re an artist, you gotta be a brand, and you gotta know what you’re selling.”
No problem there. Sisqó sells sex. Nevermind the tame lyrics and super-hero imagery, songs like “Got to Get It,” “So Sexual,” and “How Can I Love U 2nite” are all about unleashing the dragon. It’s a subject Sisqó knows plenty about. “I guess I’ve always been good with the ladies,” he says, laughing. “In high school I was really promiscuous. I used to be with one girl in the morning, and get to school late, and then meet another girl at school and leave school to go to my house with that girl. And then I would go back to school and get another girl to sleep with after school. I would do that same routine all through the week.”
Dru Hill wasn’t even a thought at that time, and Sisqó (the moniker is an old family nickname) was penniless. So what’s the secret to scoring fine chicks when you don’t have a pot to piss in?
“You gotta have game,” he says, then smiles. “Tell them what they want to hear. If you like her hair, don’t be macho — compliment her. Also, don’t be afraid to tell little white lies to make her feel good. And, most importantly, you gotta concentrate on the girl when you’re in bed. You’re gonna reach your climax regardless of whether she’s there or you’re using your hand. So be patient, and help her get to her climax first. It’s difficult for a lot of guys to make a girl have an orgasm, so think to yourself, ‘If I’m one of the guys that makes her have an orgasm, I’m gonna be one of the ones she considers to be the best.’ So ask her, ‘What do you want? What do you need? Am I doing it right? Let me know, because I’m here to please you.’ They love that.”
While Sisqó has learned how to woo the ladies, he’s no Wilt Chamberlain. Not that he couldn’t be. But he’s become extremely picky about whom he’ll sleep with, and he usually avoids sex on the road. “I look at it like, Why should I just give myself to anybody? If I’m supposed to be The Man, then it should be a privilege to get with me on that level. It’s all about being a superstar. A superstar can’t just get with anybody. Don’t get me wrong, I still need to have at least one or two bad chicks around me most of the time. I just like them to be there and smile. It brings sunshine to the whole day.”
Until recently, Sisqó’s sunshine was provided by 23-year-old Tera Thomas, whom Sisqó describes as a “regular girl” and aspiring actress. But, says Sisqó, Thomas broke off their three-year-long, on-again-off-again relationship because he was always surrounded by beautiful women and he never had time for her. He had also promised to put Thomas in a video for “Incomplete,” which was never shot.
“I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to end up getting by with another celebrity, because that seems to be the only people that really can understand what I’m going through — the reasons why I can’t call every night. Certain things in regular relationships just don’t apply to a relationship [with] someone in the entertainment industry.”
Sisqó has just finished posing for photos with the staff of WLLD-FM, the third Tampa radio station he’s visited today — and one with a demographic that lies somewhere between urban WTMP and white-collar WFLZ. Of course the chameleonic pop star acted appropriately, bantering about Eminem, Tupac, and Notorious B.I.G., and singing a cappella for the “ladies in the house.” Now, there are only about two hours before show time as Sisqó slides into his limo, cracks open a bottle of water, and starts sending messages on his platinum-colored Motorola pager. Tomorrow, he’ll fly home to Baltimore to spend the day with his five-year-old daughter (from an earlier relationship). Then he’ll resume the hectic pace of life on the road. No wonder he has little interest in groupies. He’s expending too much energy being a star to devote any time to acting like one. “I gotta be number one,” he stresses. “Being number two just ain’t enough. That just means I have to be more business-oriented to realize how to facilitate to the masses. I enjoy my success from time to time, but I never sit back and smell the roses.”
In part, Sisqó’s hunger for success and his natural ability to adopt different faces for different crowds is a result of his upbringing in Baltimore. His father worked as an electrician at Memorial Stadium, and his mom was a salesclerk for the city. On most days, Sisqó and his two sisters lived with their parents in a middle-class home that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Moesha. But weekends and summers were more like Boyz N the Hood. That was when Sisqó’s mom sent him to stay with his grandparents and cousins in the ghetto. “She wanted me to have street smarts as well as academic smarts,” the performer says. “You could hear gunshots there about twice a night. It was a different world with a totally different lingo, and it really toughened me up and taught me how to deal with being on both sides of the fence. When I first came out there, I used to cry a lot, so my godbrother used to beat my ass. I was a little, middle-class punk with more than everybody else in the neighborhood, so he’d break my toys and hit me and leave me bleeding from the nose and mouth.”
By the time Sisqó was a teenager, he was fighting back and sometimes even winning. But his aggression didn’t stop at skirmishes with his godbrother. He started picking fights with other neighborhood toughs, then hanging out with local gang members. Years later, his knuckles are still noticeably scarred from his street battles, and a hairline scar on his cheek is a reminder of the night at age 15, when he was slashed in the face with a broken bottle. “I used to let my temper control me,” he says. “But that’s a problem a lot of inner-city kids have. When you’re growing up and NWA is the number-one group, and anybody that smiles on TV is looked at as wack or soft, then your morals and values are all different.”
Age 16 is memorable for most teens because it’s the time at which they can legally drive. Sisqó will never forget his 16th year on the planet, either, but for an entirely different reason. It marked the period when he turned from a dangerous, self-destructive thug to a law-abiding, aspiring romance singer.
The year began with three trips to the local lockup — for fighting, carrying a pager in school, and mouthing off at a cop after a fight. The last time the cell door closed, Sisqó decided to change his ways. “I was sitting there with no shoestrings and no belt, because they take that from you so you don’t hang yourself. I was freezing cold, my hair was all messed up, and two of my dawgs was in the cell across from me. My big line to all the females always used to be, ‘I’m different from all the other guys.’ So I was sitting there thinking, ‘Okay, how different am I?’ I decided, ‘Man, this ain’t me. This ain’t the life I want.’”
Determined to straighten up, Sisqó quit hanging out with his former partners in crime, and started concentrating more on singing gospel with his church choir. It was something he had been doing since age five, but suddenly it took on new meaning. Even so, Sisqó didn’t consider secular singing as a career until he was nearly 17 and he received a booty call that changed his life. “I was on the phone with this girl, and she put down the phone tor a minute,” recalls Sisqó. “She had this song by Guy called “Goodbye Love” playing in the background. So I started singing it, and then she gets back on the phone just as the song climaxes with this real high note, and she starts screaming. She goes, ‘I did not know you could sing.’ I’m like, ‘Neither did I.’ And she said, ‘If you sing, I will do anything you want me to do.’ So I went over to her house the next day after school, and I sang, and she did everything to me. From that day forward, I decided I wanted to sing for a career.”
Sisqó and his middle-school friend, James Green (aka Woody), started singing together in 1993, and were joined by Green’s friend Tamir Ruffin (aka Nokio) in 1994. The three formed 14 K Harmony, with four other members, but the group dissolved soon after, when Green’s mother forced him to quit because she didn’t want him singing the “devil’s music.” Then Nokio got kicked out of school for bringing a pager to class, and ended up in a new school, where he met fellow aspiring singer Larry Anthony (aka Jazz). The three sang together under a variety of names, including Storm and Legacy, but they didn’t start making career inroads until they were rejoined by Woody in 1995, and formed Dru Hill, named after an area in Baltimore called Druid Hill Park. The group performed a cappella versions of songs by Jodeci and Michael Jackson in local talent shows and on street corners. They were discovered at the end of 1995 by their first manager, Kevin Peck, while they were working at a downtown Baltimore tourist trap called the Fudgery, where promising young singers perform and sell candy. The group was soon introduced to Interscope president Jimmy lovine and Hiram Hicks, who was then president of Island Black Music. Hicks signed the group, and by late 1996 Dru Hill released its first single, “Tell Me,” and its self-titled debut album.
For many pop and R&B artists, including Bobby Brown, Ricky Martin, and Robbie Williams, going solo is a symbol of emancipation, and once they nail a hit single, they never go back to their former groups. But the Dragon is an altogether different breed, and after he finishes touring this summer, he plans to reenter the studio with Dru Hill. “Those are my boys. I love singing with them,” he says. “I figure I’ve been preaching about how I’m gonna come back to the group for a while. So if I hurry up and do it, hopefully the world will applaud and say, ‘He did what he said he was gonna do, unlike every other artist that goes solo.’ So, hopefully, I can make history.”
There are about 30 minutes until show time, and Sisqó is warming up in his backstage dressing room. He’s sporting black leather pants, platinum and diamond rings, and his trademark studded red leather jacket, which is open, revealing his muscular chest and dangling diamond-encrusted dragon medallions. As he stretches and flexes, he discusses the next phase of his career. Before the Dragon flames cool any, he wants his own clothing line, an endorsement deal with a major manufacturer, a blockbuster Dru Hill record, another multiplatinum Sisqó disc, and a starring role in a major motion picture (possibly again involving Will Smith). There is no rest in sight for the restless.
“You got to penetrate the masses if you want to survive,” he says, sliding a red glove over his scarred knuckles. “I want to get to the level of excellence where I get whatever I ask for. When Michael Jackson says, ‘Okay, I need a glass of water with a single plum floating in a crystal glass,’ people get it for him ‘cause he’s The Man. Right now, when I ask for a bottle of lukewarm water in the studio, they bring me an ice-cold Gatorade. I gotta reach the point where, when I come back next time and I ask for some water, they’ll bring it on their knees.”
