Taylor Swift and Flavor Flav attend the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 27, 2023. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartRadio
Flavor Flav has always been vocal about his love for Taylor Swift, and now he’s opening up about his relationship with the Grammy-winning superstar, her music and her fans. In an interview with Hot 97’s Ebro in the Morning radio show Thursday (Jan. 11), the Public Enemy founding member revealed how he became “King Swiftie.”
“It started because I got a girl that lives in Detroit and her kids wanted to go to the Eras Tour concert. So my manager got in contact with Taylor Swift’s people and they hooked me up some tickets and passes,” he recounted. “When we walked over to the tent where I was supposed to be at, a lot of these fans were coming up to me — these young kids, man, I’m surprised they even knew who I was! — and they start giving me these friendship bracelets. Next thing you know, I have friendship bracelets all up and down my arm. We were trading bracelets and everything! Her fanbase embraced me, and I embraced them back.”
Flav made headlines in June when he lit up his social media pages with real-time documentation of his Eras Tour experience. He tweeted numerous pics of a seemingly endless string of friendship bracelets, and raved about his new fellow Swifties. In the Hot 97 interview, Flav also revealed that some Swifties “got together” and sent him gifts from Christmas. Nonetheless, that concert experience marked the beginning of Flav’s deep dive into Swift’s discography.
“So, I went home and I started really listening to Taylor. I’m listening to her music, and I’m like, ‘Yo, this girl is dope!’ She’s writing a lot about experiences that she goes through in life, just like a Mary J. Blige,” he explained. “Mary writes about her experiences that she goes through, then when she gets out there on that stage and she sings those songs, mostly every single woman in that audience relates to Mary because all of the women go through similar things. Same thing with Taylor — she just writing about what she goes through.”
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee also revealed his all-time favorite T-Swift track — and he surprisingly specified a version of the song without a rap verse. “My favorite record that she wrote is ‘Bad Blood,’ the original one. I like the one with Kendrick Lamar on it too, but the original ‘Bad Blood,’ you know what I’m saying?!” he said. “That’s in everybody’s relationships, in everybody’s families, in everybody’s friendships. We used to be good friends, then you did something to me, now we got bad blood … that’s deep right there!”
Back in 2015, Swift and Lamar topped the Billboard Hot 100 with their “Bad Blood” remix, and the accompanying Joseph-Kahn helmed music video earned top honors at the MTV Video Music Awards, as well as best music video at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards. Nearly a decade later, the song reached No. 7 on the Hot 100 — this time as “Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version),” from the Billboard 200-topping 1989 (Taylor’s Version) re-recording.
On Jan. 7, Swift and Flav once again found themselves in the same place at the 81st Golden Globe Awards, where the pop superstar’s Eras Tour concert film was nominated for cinematic and box office achievement. Although the Eras Tour movie lost to Greta Gerwig’s billion dollar-grossing Barbie, Swifties were more peeved at host Jo Koy’s jabs at Swift and the NFL’s coverage of her game attendance. On X, Flavor Flav wrote, “It [ain’t] an easy gig but [Koy] took the easy way to make jokes bout women and Taylor. They [ain’t] never did anything to the host so why the he gotta try to take them down?? The jokes [weren’t] funny and maybe he should apologize.”
In his own words on Hot 97, “Flavor Flav supports Taylor Swift. I am a Swiftie. And not only that, I got a new name now: King Swiftie. Thank you!”
Watch Flavor Flav’s full interview below:
