How is Flavor Flav related to Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard?
Wu-Tang Clan is a family affair, with founding members RZA, GZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard being cousins. But it turns out that there was a fourth rapping cousin in the family who, while never joining the Clan, nonetheless became a star in his own right. His name? Flavor Fav.
Speaking to HipHopDX about his family ties, Flav revealed, “In the Wu-Tang Clan, I have three blood family members that a lot don’t even know. RZA, GZA and ODB. ODB was my cousin.”
Flav, himself a member of a pioneering group in Public Enemy, was apparently never considered for the Clan at any point. He was busy getting on with his own life and work, and the same was true for them.
“It was never a convo to have me part of the group,” Flav admitted, “because they were always doing their thing and I was always doing my thing. But then we came together and did our thing.”
The final time Flav ever saw his cousin ODB was about a week before he died in 2004, following a period of increasingly erratic behavior on ODB’s part. He was only 35 when he passed away.
“The last time that I was with ODB was in Aspen, CO,” Flav recalled. “We did a gig together, and this was one week before he passed away.”
There appears to have never been any realistic prospect of Flavor Flav ever joining his three cousins in the Wu-Tang Clan, but it can hardly be said that he missed out. He had his own wildly successful career to contend with.
Many years after ODB had died, Flav did get to link up with Wu-Tang in a sense. Both they and Public Enemy went on tour together around the UK at the end of 2019, with DJ Premier and De La Soul also on the bill. The tour was known as the “Gods of Rap” for obvious reasons.
The American hip-hop scene can be very tight-knit, with lots of famous rappers being related to each other. But Flavor Flav being the fourth rapping cousin of a family that includes RZA, GZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard is a lesser known, quite shocking example of it.