ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I'm curious why you dropped the ''Eze'' from your name and went for the one-word name. I love how Chikezie Eze sounds.
CHIKEZIE: For that reason exactly.

I don't follow.
It's not [pronounced like] easy. It's eh-zeh.

Oh, so you cut off your last name for ignorant people like me?
Sadly, yes.

Okay then. What were you going to sing for Dolly Parton week?
''9 to 5.'' I was pretty excited because...well, there's no point in saying it now, but I was going to do something a little different. I was going to change up the arrangement like crazy and turn it into some rock/soul thing. It would have been insane.

Like David Cook's ''Billie Jean''?
Not quite. It would have been more like if Gnarls Barkley did it.

How does that work when one of you rearranges a classic song? Do you do the arrangement or does Rickey Minor?
In most cases you give the idea to Ricky. He's a genius and he can figure out what's going on. With ''She's a Woman'' I said I needed a banjo and a fiddler, not a violinist. I gained a lot of inspiration from the fact that when Paul McCartney sang it, he said he was trying to channel Little Richard, but it ended up sounding like bluegrass to me.

Of all the contestants, who did you bond with the most?
My boy, David Hernandez. We started this off together. We met in line in San Diego and we've been together throughout this whole thing.

That must have been rough when he got voted off.
It was rough for the simple fact that I really wanted him to make the tour. I never worried about him though because he's one of the strongest individuals I know. I have a lot of boys, though. Archie...

Archie? That's what you call David Archuleta?
Yeah, Archie. Well, we've got like 50,000 Davids!

What do you call David Cook?
Cookie.

Did you get a nickname?
There was no need.

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