Long Island's Flavor Flav sings 'Star-Spangled Banner' before NBA game

Roosevelt-born and Freeport-raised rapper Flavor Flav received grudging kudos and more than a few verbal pats on the head for his unexpectedly listenable rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" Sunday night at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, where the NBA’s Bucks played the Atlanta Hawks.

“The anthem was a long time bucket list item […] that was fun!” Flav, 64, a founding member of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame hip-hop group Public Enemy, wrote on social media afterward, reposting a video from the Bucks.

Primarily serving as Public Enemy’s hype man in the group's heyday, Flav served as comic relief with his outsized antics and his signature big clock pendants worn as necklaces. While acknowledging he is not known as a singer, he posted, “I can’t live my life worried about what people might say about me. I won’t let that stop me from trying new things and doing things I wanna do. Some people might not like that. But a sure failure is if you stop trying.”

Dressed in his trademark oversize togs, clock pendant, sunglasses, a baseball cap worn sideways and a Bucks jersey that read “59” — coinciding with his birth year, 1959 — Flav, born William Drayton Jr., sang the anthem without music. Visibly nervous, with his vocals sometimes wavering, he nevertheless gave a careful and measured three-minute performance the crowd appreciated.

One typical social-media comment read, “Not gonna lie, I clicked on the video ready to cringe. You proved me wrong in spades. You sang the national anthem, a very difficult tune, very well. To do it a cappella …. wow …. fantastic! I loved it.”

Others wrote encouragingly that he had “tried his best,” saying, “Not how you sing it, it’s how sincere you are singing it” and “You can tell he truly rehearsed this and sang to the best of his ability.” Summarized another, “You did great in the most flavor flav way. Anyone who expected a real singer performance is wild. Do you, and congrats on a bucket list check off!”

Many compared him favorably with the infamous renditions by comic Roseanne Barr between a doubleheader of the home team San Diego Padres and the Cincinnati Reds in July 1990; Olympic track and field gold medalist Carl Lewis at the Meadowlands’ New Jersey Nets and Chicago Bulls matchup in January 1993; and then-Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie at the NBA All-Star Game in February 2018.

“It wasn’t spectacular, but it also wasn’t the trainwreck you’d expect when you hear ‘Flavor Flav is singing the national anthem,’ ” opined the Black-oriented online magazine The Root. “He put his whole heart into it and sang to the best of his abilities, which is all you can really ask of someone.”

“Thankx to the @bucks for having me,” Flav, a six-time Grammy Award nominee with Public Enemy, wrote on social media, adding in another post, “Honored to sing the national anthem. God bless [flag emoji, prayer emoji].”