Flavor Flav

By the 1990s, Flav had become a drug addict. In 1991, he pled guilty to assaulting his then-girlfriend Karen Ross and he served 30 days in jail, lost custody of his children, and sank deeper into addiction. Two years later, he was charged with attempted murder and imprisoned for 90 days for shooting at his neighbor in 1993. He was later charged with domestic violence, cocaine and marijuana charges; his family performed an intervention and he checked into the Betty Ford Center for crack addiction. After leaving the clinic, Flav began dating Angie Parker, with whom he has three more children. However, because of his previous erratic behavior, Public Enemy had temporarily stopped performing and, without anything else to do, he found himself back in addiction. After his father died of diabetes in 1997 he decided to re-enter rehabilitation, this time at the Long Island Center for Recovery. At one point, he broke both arms in a motorcycle crash. After leaving the clinic, he began dating Beverly Johnson, and by 2000, he lived in a small apartment in the Bronx with her and her two kids from a previous marriage while making extra cash scalping baseball tickets. In 2002, he spent nine weeks in Rikers Island prison for driving with a suspended license, numerous parking tickets and showing up late for his probation officer.
Following his release from prison, he broke up with Johnson and moved in with his mom on Long Island. Chuck D became concerned about his friend's well-being and, towards the end of 2003, suggested Flav move to Los Angeles. He moved into his friend Princess' apartment and within months met Cris Abrego and Mark Cronin, the creators and executive producers of The Surreal Life, who had tracked him down as soon as they heard he had moved to Los Angeles. Seeing that he had remained clean from his previous addictions, they wanted to cast him. Initially Flav refused, feeling the show was for celebrities past their fame. He was eventually convinced to join by previous participant MC Hammer.