Kandi Burruss Recalls ‘Mickey Mouse Club’ Cameo With Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling (Exclusive)

Kandi Burruss may now be known as a beloved Real Housewives of Atlanta star, but she's been in the entertainment business since long before Real Housewives even existed. She's a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter, and grew to fame in the girl group Xscape, which formed in 1991 and is still active today after a couple of attempted comebacks.

In 1993, Kandi and her bandmates made an appearance on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, and there's one particular clip in which Mickey Mouse Club cast members Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling quiz the group on why they're named Xscape. Did they escape from terrorists or explosions or on horseback across the desert?

Actually no, the girls explain. "We wanted to do our own thing," Kandi says. "We didn't want to do everything that everybody else was doing already."

"We wanted to escape all stereotypes," adds LaTocha Scott.

The group also performed, of course, but it's pretty wild to watch that opener featuring three future superstars.

In an interview with The Messenger, Kandi said it was "so funny" how that clip keeps reappearing in the zeitgeist.

"It's like, wow, who knew that when we were doing that then where our lives were going to take us?" she said. "You know, it's so crazy that they're doing what they're doing, we're doing what we're doing, and it's amazing to me that we're all still able. And even then, at that point in life, who knew that I would have been working with *NSYNC writing songs or writing for them? It's like at different stages in our lives, Justin and I have ran into each other in a pleasant way. And yeah, if he wants to work together now, it's about time. It's about time for us to have another meet up for something great."

Kandi was a co-writer on *NSYNC's "Makes Me Ill," but might be best known for co-writing TLC's hit "No Scrubs." She also co-wrote RHOA castmate Kim Zolciak's "Tardy for the Party," and now she's producing a Broadway revival of The Wiz, if you need any proof of just how varied her career has been.

Kandi also recently defended Justin Timberlake after Britney Spears' memoir, "The Woman in Me," claimed he appropriated Black culture in the early 2000s, telling fans to "leave him alone."

"That era of pop and R&B, it was a lot of boy bands that did, like, urban music, urban routines and dancing, the whole image," she said. "That was in at the time, and nobody was passing judgment."