The origins of Flavor Flav’s iconic clock necklace
Picture Flavor Flav in your mind’s eye, and what do you see? The answer, presumably, is a man with a large clock dangling from his neck.
It’s a striking look, one that certainly adds to the man’s mystique. Flav was a hype man for his Public Enemy bandmates, and fashioning a distinct, easily recognisable look for himself was an effective way of doing that. It imbued him with a larger-than-life, eccentric quality, perfect for a hype man.
To be fair, it does seem likely that this apparent eccentricity is not entirely an act. When asked about why he wore the clocks during a 2017 appearance on the Pawn Stars reality TV show, he replied, “The reason why I wear this clock is because, you know, time is the most important element, and when we stop, time keeps going.” He kept things vague, semi-mystical, and a little bit odd.
Flav has also addressed the clock thing in more direct ways over the years. During an appearance on Roxanne Shanté’s SiriusXM radio show in 2023, he explained, “So one day, as a joke, as a joke, you know, this crackhead came through my projects, you know what I’m saying? Selling these shower clocks that she stole from a place called Fortunoff.”
Fortunoff, incidentally, was a retailer in New York that specialised in outdoor furniture and jewellery. It still exists today, but only as an online store. “Well,” Flav continued, “she went to Fortunoff, stole this big bag, big box of shower clocks, came through our projects, selling them.”
One of Flav’s friends, the fellow hip-hop artist Son of Berserk, then got involved. “He took the stopwatch off my neck and put the clock around my neck, and everybody was laughing,” Flav said. “It was a big joke and all of that.”
It was a passing moment, but the look was striking, and someone thought it would be funny to get Flav on stage in that state. “So they dared me to wear that clock on stage, but during the show,” Flav recalled. “So when we went to open up for the Beastie Boys in Passaic, New Jersey, 1986, I wore the clock, Roxanne, and then the next day on the front page of Newsday, New York Times, New York Post, the look of the clock was dope.”
Flav’s account on Shanté’s show of how he came to wear the clock seemed innocent enough, and it was soon picked up by other outlets and by people on social media. But the way the story had started to become framed really annoyed Flav. News outlets had really latched on to his mention of a “crackhead.”
Flav took to Instagram to push back against what he viewed as this decontextualised version of his story. Referring specifically to an article that was titled, “Flavor Flav Says Iconic Clock Necklace Was Inspired By A Crackhead,” Flav lashed out to declare this to be “fake news.”
“Whoever wrote this headline is a complete AHOLE!!!” he posted. “If you read the story, I never said the crackhead inspired the clock. I said: MY BOY BAZERK PUT THE CLOCK AROUND MY NECK AS A JOKE!! That’s where the inspiration came from, NOT THE CRACKHEAD you knucklehead writer. GET IT RIGHT!!”