Surreal, indeed. It was love—or something—at first sight when the six-foot model-actress and the diminutive Public Enemy rapper met on the third season of VH1’s The Surreal Life. (You don’t want to miss their very first “close encounter”; skip ahead to the 9:45 mark.) Their housemate Charo compared their incendiary connection to two fighting chickens in Mexico. In fact, the odd duo were so bizarrely watchable together that they landed their own spinoff, Strange Love (which had a totally fab throwback-style animated intro).
Update: It was, in fact, too strange to last: Despite their obvious attraction, the relationship between the Amazonian Nielsen and her Foofy Foofy fizzled. Flav took Nielsen to Vegas in an attempt to win her back from her fiancé, Mattia Dessi, an Italian former model who’s 15 years her junior; Dessi and Nielsen are now married. Flav continued his search for love on several seasons of yet another spinoff, Flavor of Love, before proposing to the mother of his son Karma, Liz Trujillo. Earlier this year, the two appeared on Celebrity Wife Swap, where they switched partners with Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider and his wife, Suzette.