Entry · catalog no. 7248
flava
/ /ˈfleɪvə/ /FLAY-vuh
noun · Nationwide (hip-hop) · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Distinctive style; the particular character a person or thing carries — a beat, an outfit, a way of talking. Flavor, respelled the way it is said.
“The remix got more flava than the original.”
Origin & Attribution
Black hip-hop vernacular of the 1980s and '90s. Flavor Flav wore the word as a name from Public Enemy's 1987 debut; Craig Mack's Flava in Ya Ear (1994) fixed the spelling in the mainstream at the height of the Bad Boy era.
1987
Public Enemy debuts with Flavor Flav wearing the word as a name
1994
Craig Mack's Flava in Ya Ear puts the spelling on the charts
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Nationwide (hip-hop) · 1990s
Spoken by
Black hip-hop artists and audiences of the late '80s and '90s
$FLAVAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded39 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
58/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1987
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Public Enemy, Yo! Bum Rush the Show (Def Jam) — Flavor Flav
1987
■
+ Cite a sourceCraig Mack, Flava in Ya Ear (Bad Boy)
1994
See also