8 Asians

Usually, when 8Asians blogs about American Idol it’s usually a stroke of death: Paul Kim, heralded as the anti-William Hung, gets quickly ushered out over a terrible cover of Careless Whisper. Ramiele Malubay was okay but fizzled out in the middle of the series. And then there was Sanjaya.

So this year’s recently eliminated, token Asian American contestant comes in the form of Anoop Desai, a graduate of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the UNC Clef Hangers, another A Capella group. (And, thankfully, a lot better than a certain other A Capella group from Yale.) While he was chastised early on for “looking like an engineer,” His voice carried him as a wildcard pick to become one of the Final 13 contestants, and his love of 1990’s R&B his apparent, covering Bobby Brown’s My Prerogative and Monica’s Angel of Mine. But his uneven performances eliminated him from this year’s competition in a double-elimination along with the other minority contest, the awesomely-named Lil Rounds. While we attached a video from one of his better performances — a cover of Always On My Mind — this may not be the last you hear from him; he’s chosen to leave grad school to pursue a music career full time. Hopefully then, maybe people will stop calling him the totally inappropriate nickname “Slumdog Idol.”

(Video and hat tip courtesy of: Rickey.org)