Flavor Flav sings national anthem at NBA game — and fans have thoughts

Here's a performance you won't soon forget.

Rapper Flavor Flav performed the national anthem before the Milwaukee Bucks’ Oct. 29 home game against the Atlanta Hawks at Fiserv Forum.

Yes, that Flavor Flav (as opposed to another one you may be aware of). The guy from Public Enemy, the band that once sang “911 Is a Joke” and “Fight the Power.”

Flav made sure his performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which lasted more than 2 1/2 minutes, was one to remember, even before he started. He was decked out in a No. 59 Bucks jersey and a few oversized necklaces. He sported a white hat, white sunglasses and had more glare bouncing off his diamond-encrusted watch than the rockets Francis Scott Key wrote about in the anthem.

Flav’s rendition isn’t exactly on par with Whitney Houston’s memorable version at the 1991 Super Bowl, but it’s also not going to go down in the annals of hatchet jobs, either, like the much-maligned one Fergie did at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game, Carl Lewis’ rough performance before a Chicago Bulls-New Jersey Nets game in 1993 or Roseanne Barr’s infamous 1990 rendition before a San Diego Padres game.

Flav remains on the verge of going off-key, but never does while hitting some notes in a different way than you traditionally hear them in the song.

There’s also the little matter of him singing “for the ramparts” instead of “o’er the ramparts” and “gave proof to the night” instead of “gave proof through the night,” but we’ll give him a pass.

He also finishes with a bang, repeating the final “of the brave” line three times, before wrapping up to applause from the crowd.

The rapper had a blast performing the song.

“The anthem was a long time bucket list item,,, that was fun!” he wrote on X.

“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.”

Flav’s performance divided fans, with some on X voicing how they were less than impressed.

“My ears never endured such pain until listening to this……" one person commented.

“This is the worse thing I have ever seen,” someone else wrote.

“Horrible,” another person criticized.

While those people may not have enjoyed Flav's effort, several others did applaud him.

“Tried his best. God bless,” one person wrote.

“You can tell he truly rehearsed this and sang to the best of his ability. Love it. So happy for him, go Flav!” read another post.

“Grammy worthy,” another person wrote.

“Yo! way to go FLAV!!! I was always a fan but now I’m your hard core fan for life. That was awesome! Yo!" someone else raved.

“Brave, heartfelt and sincere...way 2 go Flav!” chimed in one encouraging person.

“Not how you sing it, it’s how sincere you are singing it…good job Flav,” commented another person.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com