Flavor Flav is a name that’s synonymous with hip-hop. Long before he was a reality TV star on Flavor of Love that ran for three seasons on VH1, Flavor Flav started off his career as a member of the trailblazing hip-hop group, Public Enemy. Flav has since gone on to become one of the most famous rappers of all time and at 64 years old is still performing and recording.
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Born William Jonathan Drayton Jr. in 1959 in Roosevelt, New York, the nickname “Flavor Flav” has been a part of his life since childhood. The origins of the character of Flavor Flav allegedly stem from a time when he was smoking angel dust at the age of 17. At the time, his nickname was Ricco, until a friend helped set the stage for what would become Flavor Flav.
“When I was a kid I used to eat a whole bunch of different colored Lifesavers, and I used to drink different colored fruit-flavored sodas,” Drayton explained in an interview with The Daily Beast. “So there was a guy named Kevin Starks, and my nickname was Ricco, so he used to call me, ‘Ric the Flavor Freak.’ When MCing came about, I wanted to be out of the ordinary, but it had to mean something. So, I stuck with MC Flavor. And then Chuck D [from Public Enemy] started calling me Flavor Flav.”
“I wanted to have a name that wasn’t common, that was out of the ordinary, unusual, but yet it had to mean something,” he shared about the meaning of his name to Vlad TV. “There’s flavor in everything you do, flavor in everything you eat. Everything, it’s flavor.”
Drayton carried this moniker into Public Enemy, which he co-founded with Chuck D in 1985. The group has released 15 studio albums so far, the latest being What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? in 2020. Flav has also had a successful solo career. Though he’s only released one album, he’s collaborated with several artists over the years, including Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Wu-Tang Clan, and P. Diddy. In addition to Flavor of Love, he’s also starred in The Surreal Life and Strange Love.
Almost as important as the name Flavor Flav is his signature piece, a chained clock. The singer has long been known to wear a clock around his neck that isn’t merely a fashion statement but holds significant meaning. “The reason why I wear this clock is because time is the most important element and when we stop, time keeps going,” he explained in an episode of Pawn Stars.
During the 2023 Grammy Awards, Public Enemy performed as part of the 50th-anniversary tribute to hip-hop.
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
