What was crucial to the partnership, it should be noted, is that Flavor Flav was a clown - in the tradition of the best black comics - yet he was a clown with consciousness, empowered with knowledge of self, an entirely different persona from the "Stepin Fetchit" and "Sambo" stereotypes of subservient and uncouth black Americans. Flavor Flav was and is a fool, but a fool on a mission. On the cover of Nation of Millions, he wears a gigantic clock as a medallion - a preposterous getup - yet it is designed to illustrate, through a comic medium, that time is indeed running out.