Early Life
Drayton grew up in Freeport, New York. Flav began playing the piano at age five; and is self-taught. A musical prodigy, he sang in the youth choir at his church and mastered the piano, drums, and guitar at an early age. He eventually became proficient in 15 instruments.
He set a house on fire as a small child while playing with a lighter; by the time he dropped out of school in the 11th grade, he had been in and out of jail for robbery and burglary. Flav graduated from culinary school in 1978, and has cooked in several restaurants.
He attended Adelphi University on Long Island where he met Carlton Ridenhour, who would become known as Chuck D. Flavor Flav took his stage name after his graffiti tag. They first collaborated on Chuck D's hip-hop college radio show, then began rapping together. The two worked for Chuck D's father's delivery service.
Read more about this topic: Flavor Flav
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers’ wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)