Usual Suspect NadiBadGal of CutdacheckTV

What is your favorite 80s song?
Although I was all of 4 when it came out, I would have to say “My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown. Simply because I am a “NO ONE CAN TELL ME WHAT TO DO” type of chick and always have been. OWWWWWWWW!!!!

Describe the last dream you had.
Yeah. So. Uh, to try and keep this a family friendly site, I’m going to skip on to the next joint. LOL.

Favorite book?
The Odyssey by Homer. It is actually an epic poem that mainly centers on the Greek hero Odyessyus (or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his 10 year long journey home following the fall of Troy. I am an absolute mythology freak!

The gadget you can’t live without is
My baby, the Blackberry Curve. I hated this thing when I first got it but now I think I would die if something happened to it!
P.S. “MY TWITTER FAM IS COOLER THEN YOURS.”

Usual Suspect Fungkeblakchik of Fungkeblakchik

What is your favorite 80s song?
Pass The Dutchie – Musical Youth

I remember the first time I heard it, I was spending the weekend at my cousin’s house in Brooklyn, and I had no clue what a “dutchie” was at the time & I doubt he did either. The song stayed in my head that whole weekend, but when I returned home to the ‘burbs of NJ singing it, my mother popped me in the mouth. Needless to say, passing a dutchie was not something you were supposed to sing about or do in a Pentecostal household.

Describe the last dream you had.

I dreamed a spider was gradually finding it’s way from my ceiling to my bed as I was laying in it…the next thing I realized, I took my heavy tempurpedic pillow & threw it at the spider. I woke up to the sound of my cable box flying off my TV because the pillow hit it.

Favorite book?

Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? – Judy Blume. I think I read this book about 10xs as a kid. It basically taught me everything about boys, religion, getting my period & friendship.

The gadget you can’t live without is
I’d die if I didn’t have my Blackberry. It’s my lifeline to the world basically. Maybe when someone buys me an Ipad, that’ll be the new gadget I can’t live without, but I truly can’t imagine carrying a giant etch-sketch around all the time.

Usual Suspect: Erykah Marie
What is your favorite 80s song?
“I’m Bad” by LL Cool J is a classic 80’s song to me. Every time I hear it, it automatically makes me think of LL with the Kangol and jogging pants jumping around with the big chain.

How about the last dream you had?
I don’t typically remember my dreams. (I think my dream catcher not only catches the bad dreams, but all of them.) The only dream that I remember was when I was 5 years old… I was playing with the Smurfs and Gargamel began to chase us. He caught us and we were in the cage on his table trying to get out… then I woke up and a bird was flying in my bedroom. It completely freaked me out!

Worst date you’ve been on?
The worst date that I can remember would have to be when my cousin and I were doubling with her boyfriend and his cousin. We were going to the movies and the guy was trying to keep up with my cousin because he didn’t know where we were going. He ends up getting pulled over and getting two tickets for speeding and following to closely. Definitely spoiled the mood, and was probably the most expensive date that he ever had.

Hands down best internet experience?
I actually connected with my boo through Facebook. We had a lot of mutual friends, had seen each other but had never met before then. He introduced himself on Facebook just over three years ago.

Another would be actually connecting with Erykah Badu via Twitter. It turns out that her daughter Mars’s dad, Jay Electronica , and my boo went to the same high school in New Orleans.

Usual Suspect: Zo! the Musical Architect

What is your favorite 80s song?
With so many dope 80’s joints to choose from… I’m gonna have to say that my favorite is “Don’t Disturb This Groove” by The System. One of the first reasons is that I get so wrapped up in nostalgia every time I listen to it. You know how you listen to a joint and it automatically takes you to a certain place or time period in your life? Well, I have a series of 80’s songs that I call “Saturday Car Wash Joints” because they remind me so much of being outside and helping my Father or my Godfather who lived across the street from us wash the whip on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Normally I would take my little radio outside or they would just have the radio blasting from inside the car. Any of those bright sounding 80’s, ‘Jheri Curl’ joints like “Happy” by Surface, “Curious” by Midnight Star, “The Finest” by S.O.S. Band ALL put me in the same place… right in that driveway as a kid, helping my peoples wash the car on the weekend. But out of all those joints, “Don’t Disturb This Groove” always stood out to me simply because to me, there is no other joint that sounds like it. I mean, you’ve got this syncopated ‘one-two’ drum machine beat with some synth chord stabs that hit before the count surrounded by these melodic notes added in as the “extra candy”. Finally, you have the synth bass that just bounces around the music basically counteracting with everything else that’s happening flowing into a chorus that serves as the song’s climax…multiple times. Plus, all in all… It’s one of those songs that just feels good and it actually has aged well.

How about the last dream you had?
I actually had a couple of weird ones the night before last. In the first one, I was somewhere out about to get on the stage to play a gig and someone told me about not one… not even two… but THREE people in my life who had passed away. The bugged out part about it was that there were folks in the room who were close to the same three people and they were acting like nothing had even occurred – they were looking at me like, “You ready to hit this stage?” Oh word? Kats passing away in 3’s and y’all are just trying to hit the stage, huh? Needless to say, I woke up from that dream extremely relieved that everyone in the dream was alive and doing okay. So, I turned over and went back to sleep after waking up from that one and I fell right into another odd storyline. This time I was had a music room that I would teach music in (which is what I do in real life as well). The room was set up just like my current classroom with various instruments available and ready to play from drums, to keyboards, to guitars and percussion instruments. So I guess one night I happened to walk in the room after hours and discovered that it had been cleaned out, I’m talking about EVERYTHING was gone – equipment, wires, GONE. The crazy thing was, whoever did it was still sneaking around outside. Now, we all know that when dreaming, our everyday thinking and rationale are both WAY off, right? With that being said, the ONLY way that I felt that I could remedy this situation was to hop in my car and try to run his ass over. Not find him and beat him up, not call the cops out…none of that. I was concentrating on getting in my car so that I could chase dude down and crush him with the car. But when I got outside…dude had stolen my car too! Probably packed all the room equipment in there and got the hell up outta dodge. Woke up after that ready to kick one of my students’ asses…

Worst date you’ve been on?
The “Right Out of College” dating era was the worst simply because that’s when I found out that everything I did and every move I made with a girl had to come with a ‘definition’ talk…

…….a ‘where are we’ talk. The hell? Everybody was reprogrammed during those college years. A lotta folks lost their innocence and the experience may have tainted them so much that you had to damn near go through a scanning process to even engage in a conversation with a young lady. I can’t think of any one date that could add up to the series of silliness that would happen on a variety of ‘dates’.

Like the time I was out to eat with a girl…who took me back to her apartment so that she could go through her roommate’s things in order to find something with her social security and driver’s license # because she was afraid that the girl was gonna leave her with a ton of bills. She actually found one of the two she was searching for, then had the nerve to turn to me and say, “You don’t think I’m crazy do you?” *looks for nearest exit*

Or another time that I was out with a girl who was disgusted with me for enjoying Chris Rock’s stand-up comedy because he used the word “nigga”. So because I didn’t appreciate the fact that there were being rules set on a first date, I proceeded to use the word a couple of times in our conversation at the table because at that point I already knew it wasn’t going past that night. I just remember her saying… “What did I tell you about using that WORRRD BROTHA?” It was most entertaining to me, and still is.

Hands down best internet experience?
At the end of June 2008 while waiting for our “Zo! & Tigallo Love the 80’s” album to be manufactured, Phonte and I decided to get things moving on our end with some promotion. After discussing it via IM, we finally took the cover art for the album and leaked it a couple of places on the net just to kind of see what everybody would say, I guess. I think we put it up on OkayPlayer, The Justus League’s message board, and made it our profile pics on MySpace. The overall response itself let me know that we were sitting on something special. After about 5 minutes, the joint had landed on about 3 or 4 blogs already. After about an hour, my phone started ringing with calls and texts w/folks crackin’ up talking about how much of some fools we were for rockin the jheri curls… Maaaaaan, how would that look if we had a current cover for a joint that says that we love the 80’s? Our thinking behind it was to go ALL the way 80’s with it. Thinking back on it, I wish we would have recorded the photo shoot for it, because we took about 200+ shots for it and acted a FOOL the entire time, so the pictures told only half of the story. But I do think that releasing that cover art first took whatever interest there was for the album and put it over the top for us. People still ask me about that album cover to this day…

Usual Suspect: Devi Dev of www.DeviDev.com

What is your favorite 80s song?
“I Wanna Be Your Man”- Roger (unlimited)

How about the last dream you had?
I have been having the world’s most boring dreams these past several months. I dream I’m doing random, tedious things and just having a basic day. My REM is like an episode of Seinfeld….a dream about nothing yet at the same time something. In my last dream I was grocery shopping and struck up a convo with a random man in the frozen section.

Worst date you’ve been on?
A mutual friend introduced us at a party and he seemed like a funny guy, so I accepted his offer to go to dinner. Well by the time dinner was over he was already declaring his intense like for me and saying we were officially together (we had hung out for an hour and a half). I thought he was being over the top silly, so I laughed it off…until he started calling me and emailing me 10 times a day. After about two weeks of that, and never getting an answer or response from me, he stopped.

Hands down best internet experience?
When Myspace was first getting popular I found ‘Tha Goodfellas’ (power 106, 93.5 KDAY) on there and sent them a message asking if they needed an intern. I copy and pasted my resume (such an amateur I was). They hit me back and I ended up getting hired at 93.5 KDAY in L.A. You can find opportunities in the most random forms!

Usual Supsect: Hip Hop Legend Pos aka Plug Won of De La Soul

What is your favorite 80s song?
“Buffalo Girls” Malcom McLaren
“I Can’t Go For That” Hall & Oats
“Bridge” MC Shan
Criminal Minded [Entire Album] Boogie Down Productions
Raising Hell [Entire Album] Run DMC

How about the last dream you had?
I was outside fishing while listening to ‘Kick in the Door’ by Big

Worst date you’ve been on?
Never had one. Seriously.

Hands down best internet experience?
Winning my bid on Ebay for a copy of the Black History Comics that I had when I was in the 1st grade.

Usual Suspect: Andreas Hale of BET.com

What is your favorite 80s song?
A-Ha “Take On Me” You thought it was some Hip Hop shit? Nope. I still try to hit that note. And don’t front on the video. The comic book to real life transition was AWESOME.

How about the last dream you had?
I was making a beat for somebody but I kept getting weird noises as I was pushing the MPC pads. Horses coughing, fart sounds, burps. It was kinda like the machine Ferris Bueller was using to pretend he was sick. Mind you, I’m no producer but what I was cooking up for some random rapper was dope as hell…until the fart sounds. Don’t know what I ate that night but that’s the last dream I remember.

Worst date you’ve been on?
Damn…had to be freshman year of college. It was a group date and the dudes were all broke. These rich girls we were dating (Rudy Huxtable’s old crew…she don’t remember though) took our broke asses to Benihana. We had to cover up our brokeness by splitting meals between the homies. We were dressed fresh to death but had about $22 between all of us. A noodle here, a piece of fish there…yeah we was some broke ass, foolish looking jackasses. The ladies didn’t find that fly at all. I think they laughed at us for the rest of the school year.

Hands down best internet experience?
Writing an editorial called “Who The Hell Am I: Hip Hop – The New N-Word” during my tenure as EIC of HipHopDX and having the Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock get his feathers ruffled by some of the things I said. Emails were exchanged, people took sides and I shut his ass up.

Usual Suspect: The Producer, Musician and Artist: Nicolay

What is your favorite 80s song?
Anything by Prince, preferably off of “Parade.”

How about the last dream you had?
I dreamed about the third Foreign Exchange album coming out.

How did you come up with the name Foreign Exchange?
It was actually Big Pooh of Little Brother that came up with that name. We all thought it was very appropriate.

Hands down best internet experience?
My whole career is one big internet experience. Without the internet I would literally not be where I am today.

Check out Nicolay at NicolayMusic.com

Usual Suspect: Award winning journalist & editor Raquel Cepeda of Djali Rancher

What is your favorite 80s song?
Lately, I’ve been feeling ‘Lifetime Love’ by Joyce Sims from her Come Into My Life record because it’s emblematic of the summer and because I’m obsessed with that black and white dress she wears towards the end of the video. I wear the ’80s really well and now that the weather’s changing in New York City, I’m feeling crazy dainty. However, if you ask me the same question tomorrow, my Gemini self may answer the very same question with Jungle Brother’s “I’ll House You,” Frankie Ruiz’ “Para Darte Fuego,” De La Soul’s “Buddy,” Eddie Santiago’s “Tu Me Quemas,” Eric B. & Rakim’s “I Ain’t No Joke,” or Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise.” Really, it depends on the moment.

How about the last dream you had?
The other night I had a dream that took place in the Eastern Congo. In it, I went to a coltan mine with RZA and Ghostface Killah in the middle of a conflict that’s displaced millions and has led to the systemic use of torture and rape of women and girls as a tool to terrorize the people. So in it, RZA goes ballistic after seeing a tumor growing out like a tail on this dude back and Ghostface says, “What the fuck am I doing here. What the fuck is coltan man. This shit is like, man, I wish I didn’t smoke that blunt before we got off the helicopter but I needed that shit ‘cuz I’m in fucking Africa man. This shit is illuminati man.” RZA is shocked. He looks at his cell phone and crushes it. 80 percent of the stuff used in cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices comes from what these dudes are mining. He runs past a group of women, women holding deformed babies, and runs into the helicopter. He trashes the makeshift studio in the heli. He throws my Mac out the door. Then he takes my hidden camera from my stupid construction and trashes it. I lose all my footage. That’s all I remember.

Which X-Men character are you?
I identify with Storm. She’s ethnically ambiguous: one of those souls, like me, that looks like she could be from any country she visits. She has a fiercely independent spirit. Her experiences, good and bad, have informed her. She sees people for who they are, and it sometimes leaves her disgusted with humanity. She’s suffered many losses but moves forward guided by what true revolutionaries embody: feelings of love.

Hands down best internet experience?
I’ve had quite a few great internet experiences. The latest just happened last month: being reunited with one of my oldest girlfriends from high school via Facebook. She was one of those rare people who really left a lasting impression on me. She really mattered.

Usual Suspect: Aura of AllThatsFab.com

What is your favorite 80s song?
I’m more into the early 90’s music, but I guess I will have to say anything by Michael Jackson. I was obsessed with him when I was a child. Most of my favorite songs came off the “Bad” album.

How about the last dream you had?
Last night I dreamed that all of my friends from college and high school came to visit me in New York all at once, and we all went to the first Saturday party at the Brooklyn Museum. Soooo random, as are all of my dreams.

Worst date you’ve been on?
I’ve never really been on a bad date that I can remember, because every opportunity that I have to go out with someone, I try to make the most out of the situation. After all, at least I’m getting a free meal out of the deal, right? lol. The only bad dates occur when the guy is extremely boring and doesn’t have anything to talk about, but I try to do my best to somewhat screen people before I even go out with them in the first place.

Hands down best internet experience?
Starting AllThatsFab.com with my friend, Martine was my best internet experience. If you’re an aspiring writer/journalist, starting a blog is definitely a great way to put yourself out there and let your voice be heard. I’ve received so many great opportunities and offers because of the site, and I feel starting it was one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made. I will also mention that I’ve met a lot of great people and connections via the internet by putting my personality out there and making my skills known.

Usual Suspect: Jacques Morels of JacquesMorels.com

What is your favorite 80s song?
Hmmm…To be honest…Pat Benatar – “Love is A Battlefield”. I remember hearing it sampled by Kay Slay on a Wackoose (Papoose) song and I fell in love with it and her at the same time. I bump that song when I have girls in my car. lol!!

How about the last dream you had?
That my father was alive again. It was weird. I have conversations with him in my dreams all the time ya’know? My mother thinks it is because I still have not coped with his death. I am a pretty shut person so I think it makes a lot of sense.

Worst date you’ve been on?
I will give you one bad one and one funny one. The bad one, well it happens a lot to me, I will have a great time with a girl and she just does not respond to my texts anymore….I have no idea why it happens.

The funny one?
One time I went to see a movie with this chick…she was really hot. Anyway, I had to fart the entire movie, but we were kissing and I did not want to leave and go to the bathroom. Nor did I want to even fart next to her. After the movie, (which was Benjamin Button…yea I was holding it for a while) we sat in my car and I said to her…“I am sorry but I have had to fart alllllll movie” I then let out the longest and loudest fart ever. What did she do? She laughed. I then proceeded to date her for a year and some change.

Hands down best internet experience?
Twitter. I have met so many people on Twitter from around the nation that I have become FRIENDS with….it is insane.

Usual Suspect: The FlyGirl herself of FlyStyleLife

What is your favorite 80s song?
Oh wow. Hmmm, Just one? I think Mike Jackson was my very first crush so I love love loved anything he touched. But if I had to pick one song for the entire decade I guess it would be ‘In The Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins. I can still see Sonny with the top off, driving in darkness to a deal where everything’s on the line…

How about the last dream you had?
Lately I’ve been having very inappropriate dreams…

Worst date you’ve been on?
The dude was arrested. We’d gotten pulled over, I was like 19 and he was early 20’s. He had warrants so they arrested him and impounded the car. I ended up walking home at like 1 am. What’s funny is I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone what exactly happened.

Ahhh well. He was fine a hell though.

Hands down best internet experience?
FlyStyleLife.com. I’ve been in entertainment for almost ten years but I never truly owned myself. But this site has allowed me to combine all of my passions and still have ownership of my work. Hands down, the best.