Candice Glover is back after getting cut during the Vegas round last season, not that I remember her at all. She says that this year she's here to be herself, which must explain the purple streaks in her hair. Randy barely remembers her either, and it probably doesn't help that she says people compare her to Josh Ledet. She's good, but I don't see the vocal resemblance. After all, Josh always started out screaming, but Candice builds up to it. Which nobody ever does, because who has time, but she starts out well enough that they let her keep running and it pays off in the end. In fact, Randy and Mariah give her a standing ovation, declaring hers the best audition of the season. Nicki declares, "I want to skin you and wear you," which is probably the best compliment anyone has ever received from Nicki Minaj, or indeed from anyone. Ever. They gush over how awesome she is and give her unanimous, simultaneous yeses. Her family's beyond excited outside the room, and the camera pans from them to another, more miserable-looking family of the person waiting to go next, as if to demonstrate that there can be no true joy without despair.

Next is Ja'bria Barber, 16, from Clover, South Carolina, who likes to go "frog-gigging." The judges have never heard of this activity. I have, but I've blocked what it means, so the editors helpfully take us to her mobile home and follow her and her little party out to the crick at night to watch her spear bullfrogs in the mud so she can take them home and have her mom fry up the legs. "Tastes like chicken!" she insists. "There would be a lot of disabled frogs in the world," Nicki says once we're back in the audition room, and makes Ja'bria promise to stop killing frogs. Ja'bria goes into the Bonnie Raitt version of "Pride and Joy," all loud and sassy-like. Mariah likes the song and her voice, even if she doesn't care for the frog thing. Randy and Nicki also like her, so one unanimous vote later, she's going to Hollywood.

I guess we're overdue for a freak after the singing frog-hunter, so it's time for Brad Harris, a stumpy bald guy who explains that his high school didn't have a wrestling team, so they made dance videos instead. Brad's big move was apparently banging his head on things, and it shows. In the audition room, he reveals that his hip-hop name is B-Akon, which earns him a little goodwill from the judges until he starts actually singing that song from Aladdin while the judges fantasize about bacon. He is summarily dismissed without so much as a handshake, even though he asks for one.