Bugs Bunny Inspired Part of the ‘Thong Song’ Video

If you open up your music library and click on any song, there’s likely to be a rich and layered history to it. Some of these facts are common knowledge, while others teeter dangerously close to being urban legends. 

One earworm from the early aughts you’ve heard plenty of times — Sisqo’s “Thong Song” — has an encyclopedia’s worth of history. For one, it was originally intended for Michael Jackson. The producers also brought in Bruce Dukov, a Juilliard-trained violinist who was part of the Star Wars orchestra, to re-record the strings on the track.

But that’s just scratching the surface. Thanks to recently resurfaced footage from an episode of VICE’s The Story of…, a docuseries where the media outlet interviews artists about some of their biggest hits, Sisqo shared some highly unlikely inspiration behind the video for “Thong Song.”

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“I had a kind of idea of what the video should be,” he explained. “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.’” 

If you recall the Miami Beach-based video, Sisqó sprinted over the heads of a beach full of bikini-clad women very (I guess?) Bugs-like in one of the video’s most iconic scenes.

Although that’s where Sisqo stops giving the credit to Bugs and starts giving it to a higher power. Or as he put it in the The Story Of… segment, “Jesus walked on water, but Sisqo walked on bitches.”

Jesus walked on water and, thanks to Elmer and Bugs, Sisqó “walked on some bitches.”