Olympic skier Ted Ligety inspires remake of Blackstreet's hit song 'No Diggity'
Sure, the start of the Sochi Games are still more than a week away, but can we hand out a gold medal early? If so, this J.C. Penney "Go Ligety" ad should be standing at the highest Winter Olympics podium already.
It's centered around Team USA skier Ted Ligety, a 2006 gold medalist, who is back again for his third Olympics as part of the alpine skiing team.
In a fit of this-sounds-like-that brilliance, someone in the J.C. Penney advertising department decided to green-light a song about Ted Ligety (and the Winter Olympics as a whole) set to Blackstreet's 1996 hit song "No Diggity." J.C. Penney is also raising money for the U.S. Olympic Committee through a "rounding up" campaign, which is admirable.
What evaluated Go Ligety/No Diggity from a meme or morning radio gag into something special was J.C. Penney's recruitment of Blackstreet member Chauncey "C. Black" Hannibal. He sings the 2014 version and stars in the video.
While the song is full of blatant pushing of J.C. Penney products (as you would expect), there's also some quality head nods to the original Blackstreet video. Leading the way is the Lil' Penney-like marionettes that also starred in the 1996 version. Sadly, there's no Dr. Dre or Queen Pen on hand to bust a rhyme.
Because you know you have to watch it now, here's the original version of "No Diggity." Compare the two and wonder for yourself, whatever did happen to Queen Pen?
Want to know more about Ligety, beyond the rhymey nature of his name? Then we've got one more video for you to watch while you hum the melody of "No Diggity" — for the next couple minutes and probably the rest of the day.
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is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
