'Strange' tale of Flavor Flav Rapper's cred takes hit

As a member of Public Enemy, Flavor Flav was part hype-man, part flesh-and-blood cartoon character, yet he was far more than his spastic dance moves, oversize sunglasses, and mouthful of gold teeth.

More than a mere fool, he was hip-hop's Fool in a grand Shakespearean fashion. His comic relief played off rapper Chuck D's agitprop lyrics and the Bomb Squad's angry wall of sound production, and befitting a man whose signature accessory was a dinner-plate sized clock dangling from his scrawny neck, Flav always knew what time it was.

Like the Fool in Shakespeare's ''King Lear," Flav knew more than he showed, and he was no less politically minded than Chuck D. His purposeful simplicity allowed him to deliver bitter truths whether he was dismissing such icons as Elvis Presley and John Wayne in ''Fight the Power," or denouncing police negligence is ''911 Is a Joke."

Now, sadly, it's Flavor Flav who's the joke, a reality-TV clown.

Every Sunday night, there he is on VH1's ''Strange Love," a spinoff of sorts from last season's installment of ''The Surreal Life," where washed-up celebrities try to revive their faded fame by letting cameras film them as they live together in a rented mansion.

On that show, he began what was supposed to be a relationship with Brigitte Nielsen, who, far removed from the icy beauty of her ''Beverly Hills Cop 2" days, now resembles the world's worst drag queen. These days, the two are featured on ''Strange Love," with Flav pursuing Nielsen to Milan, where she lives with her bewildered boy-toy fiance.

Promoted as a reunion of the ''ghetto-flash and Euro-trash duo," there's nothing believable about this relationship, but one could also make the same claim about nearly every reality-TV program. Yet what really makes this half-hour show so troubling (other than several shots of a makeup-free Nielsen first thing in the morning) is how Flav is portrayed -- or, more accurately, how he portrays himself.

He's loud, off-putting, and inappropriate. Presumably with Flav's blessing, the show presents him as the ultimate fish out of water, a middle-age homeboy traipsing through Italy, steamrolling customs, and acting a fool before frightened onlookers.

Making matters worse is Nielsen's pet name for Flav. Though she says she prefers the quieter William Drayton (his real name) to the more flamboyant Flavor Flav, she doesn't call him that. She calls him ''Fuffy Fuffy," pronounced ''foo-fy foo-fy," further infantilizing him. If her idea is to encourage the adult William, why call him a name better suited for a poodle?

Then again, that's Nielsen's thing -- making herself look better by presenting Flav in as ridiculous and unflattering a light as possible. On this week's episode, she takes Flav to a fancy dinner in Lake Como with her snooty friends. Naturally, they're disgusted by Flav, done up in a white, black-pinstripe suit and two-tone shoes more appropriate for a pimp convention. Through a translator, a woman asked the fidgety Flav his age. When he says he's 44, and she rolls her eyes, saying he acts like a 13-year-old. The translator tells Flav the woman said he looked 13, which Flav takes as a compliment. Speaking in Italian, the woman and the translator then laugh at Flav for being so dim he would receive her insult as praise.

At one point, Nielsen leaned over to Flav and whispered, ''These people are not used to a black man at their table, can you tell?" This is the point where viewers are supposed to feel superior to these bigoted foreigners, but, of course, the joke is never really on them. We're supposed to find Flav just as unsettling.

Designed to laugh at Flav, and never with him, the show offers him as a modern-day minstrel resurrecting all those ancient fears -- abroad and at home -- about slow-witted, socially inept black men.

In Public Enemy, Flav was an integral part of rap's most important and influential group. Yet for those most familiar with Public Enemy, seeing him on ''Strange Love," is a sorrowful experience. No longer at the hip-hop's heights -- P.E. hasn't released a consistent album since 1991's ''Apocalypse 91 . . . The Enemy Strikes Back"-- Flav is now settling for rancid brand of cheesy celebrity that will melt away faster than the snow piled up in New England driveways.

First with ''The Surreal Life," and now ''Strange Love," Flavor Flav has mortgaged the light of his reputation for the capricious heat of reality-TV stardom. Where he began as a Fool who spoke the truth, Flav is now just a fool who's only clowning himself.

Renée Graham's Life in the Pop Lane column runs Tuesdays. She can be reached at graham@globe.com