In my 45 years on Earth, Ive never seen a person place this order at a restaurant.
Flavor Flavis at the Millennium Hilton near the United Nations in New York the day before Thanksgiving.
Ive been doing this for years now, the 65-year-old says after bobbing his head to consume both simultaneously.
Flavor Flav and Tupac Shakur at the 1989 American Music AwardsClarence Gatson/Gado/Getty Images
Milk and orange juice together; its a Creamsicle.
The makeshift Popsicle feels like a small window into the naturally absurdist mind of hip-hops greatest hype man.
What are the most important rules that you live by?Be good to myself.
Another rule: Dont hurt nobodys feelings.
Theres days I dont want to take no pictures or sign autographs.
Thats why my sons name is Karma; what goes around comes around.
I just get the hell away from them.
Whatever they did to me, its going to come back to them, but not through me.
Me and Miles Davis narrated that.
[A man approaches Flav for a photo with his friends.
Its the first of eight or so groups that will ask for a photo during our interview.
Flav obliges each request, asking them where theyre from and what brings them to New York.]
How would your career have been different if you had landed it?Honestly, a whole lot different.
I went and read for the role, and, man, I made it.
Chuck and Hank didnt want me doing that.
I wouldve took off, but they didnt know where Public Enemy wouldve went.
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What advice do you wish you could give your younger self?
My mom used to tell me, Now you know all your dos and you know all your donts.
So do your dos, leave all your donts alone, and youll be all right.
I didnt listen to that.
What is the biggest misconception about you?People underestimate my power of knowledge.
People wouldnt expect me to know a lot of the things that I know.
People have a tendency of trying to take advantage of me with the things that I dont know.
You play around a dozen instruments, right?I play 14 different instruments.
Does it bother you that most people dont realize that?
When I dont have knowledge of other people, I wonder, does it bother them?
So does it bother me?
I never thought about it, and I never would let it bother me.
One thing about Flavor Flav, he loves to shock the world.
Im like a Criss Angel.
I love to razzle dazzle you.
And thats what my boy Criss Angel does: He razzle dazzles people.
[CrissAngel gets a special section in the acknowledgements part of Flavs memoir.
Flav spends the next five minutes extolling his favorite Criss Angel magic tricks in incredible detail.]
Back in the day, I was a musician and I used to have bands.
So we played this at our high school talent show, and we won with this instrumental Brass Monster.
And that was one of the first songs that I ever really wrote as a band.
Grandpa Munster?Thats right.
How does that happen?He used to have a restaurant on Bleecker Street, called Grandpas.
Thats where I met Grandpa, and we exchanged numbers, and we were friends before he passed away.
And thats where I got introduced to arugula.
Hanging out with Lyor Cohen.
And Eddie Murphy was in your ninth-grade English class.
A teenage Tupac Shakur wanted to beat up a guy for stealing Public Enemys plastic guns on tour.
Hey, wheres our stuff at?
Wheres our stuff at?
Next thing you know, my group start punching on the guy.
Tupac was like, Man, yall step back, man.
Let me show yall how this is done.
Tupac took off his belt and started beating the guy with his belt.
The guy was on the floor.
But Tupac pushed me up against the wall real hard, and I dropped the fire extinguisher.
What the hell is wrong with you, man?
Youre gonna fucking kill a guy.
Tupac stopped me from committing a murder by accident.
So thank you, Tupac, for saving my freedom and my life.
You got in trouble a lot as a kid.
Whoever wins the game wins [a] beer.
This guy named Abraham lost, ran off with the beer anyway, and drank it.
The world is going to think Flavor Flav is crazy for this shit, but its all right.
We took another bottle, poured the beer out, and peed in it.
We peed in the motherfucking bottle and washed the bottle off and put it in the refrigerator.
We let him go get that bottle on purpose because the bottle was sitting there sweating in the heat.
It was looking good and everything, man.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
He took a swig of that shit and was like … Yo!
We was all dying laughing.
Peopleincluded you in theirSexiest Man Alive issuealongside Denzel Washington and Andy Garcia.
Did that surprise you?It surprised me big because I dont feel Im sexy.
I was shocked to see it.
There was a lady that came up to me in the airport and said, Ooh,Flavor Flav.
You so ugly, but I want to take a picture with you.
And you know what I did?
I said, OK, come on.
I did not offend her back or anything.
Its a big jump from that to Sexiest Man Alive.Yeah.
And not only was I a California Raisin, but I was also a Ninja Turtle.
But it made me feel real good inside.
Im like, Wow, how can I be one of the sexiest men alive?
You cant even see my eyes.
I got on sunglasses.
But, hey, I aint going to lie.
You wrote in your memoir, Im an adrenaline junkie, and I always have been.
[My instructor] was mimicking me and …
I thought he was telling me, Pull the cord, pull the cord.
That was the longest trip to Earth I ever had in my life.
It was so scary.
I almost passed out because the air was so thin up there.
Also, train surfing on the top of a train going through the New York subways.
People wouldnt expect me to know a lot of the things that I know.
Youve had to miss a lot of Public Enemy shows in the past due to drugs and other issues.
A few of them were my fault, but a few of them, no.
The gigs that I did miss was all my fault.
Yeah, boy.Thats three oclock.
So 11 oclock, its doing…Yeah, then it does 11Yeah, boys.
Youve gone viral for your backstage meetings withfamous musicians.
It was at the DMC [DJ] Championships in London, and he had on a brown glove.
Ill never forget it.
The only time that I ever met James [and I] never got a picture with that man.
At your lowest, you were spending about $2,500 a day on drugs.
What was rock bottom for you?I had an out-of-body experience.
I was laying in bed one time in my mothers basement after getting high so much.
It was a nice, peaceful flight.
In January 2018, youtweeted of Donald Trump, You are one crazy motherfucker.
Very destructive, very destructive, most destructive president in U.S. history.
And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
Do you still feel that way?
[Pauses for 20 seconds.]
Time is different now from way back then.
Donald Trump is a lot different than he was way back then.
[Pauses for 50 more seconds.
]I dont feel like that anymore.
I feel that he could be [destructive] if he wanted to be.
And there are a lot of other presidents I feel that was scared to stand up to Putin.
Donald Trump aint scared of nobody.
Hes a backyard bully dog.
So I feel that he can be more useful now than destructive.
And, no, I amnotpro-Trump.
But we aint got no choice but to let him do his job because hes the president now.
Im just facing reality.
We aint got no choice but to sit back and let the man do his job.
Would you perform at his inauguration if he asked you to?Fuck no!
Youre one of the most approachable people in music.
I just lived day to day, and I take it as it comes.
This is who I am.
Theres only two things in this world that changes for Flavor Flav: the weather and my drawers.
Theres a bigger conversation happening now in music over boundaries between the artist and fans.
I dont have no boundaries.
Im a peoples person.
I spread myself very thin.
I want every single person in that audience to get a piece of me.
Did you have conversations with Chuck when those shows were going on?
Did he ever weigh in with his opinion?I never had conversations with Chuck about it.
I never cared about what anybody else had to say about whatever I was doing.
They just let me do my thing.
Chuck was always happy that I was able to do these things and the whole nine.
Youve worn hundreds, if not thousands, of clocks in your life.
I dont know what the fuck is going on.
But I might request that on top of my coffin is a built-in clock.
And then also when you open up the lid, theres a big clock.
What does the tombstone say?Its about time.
