Flavor Flav has been many things throughout his career: rapper, reality TV star, even restaurant owner.

Now, the clock-wearing musician has found a new and unlikely calling in the sports world, offering his services as hype man for the US women’s water polo team ahead of this year’s Paris Olympics.

The decision was seemingly spontaneous. Flav decided to get behind the team after seeing an Instagram post from captain Maggie Steffens, who was making a rallying cry for more people to follow the sport with the Olympics looming.

“I was definitely shocked and it felt very surreal,” Steffens tells CNN Sport about seeing that Flav had responded to her post. “It’s great because what water polo needs, and what a lot of these niche sports need, is someone to open the door to our sport. There’s only so much that we as the athletes can do.”

Flav, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee best known for co-founding rap group Public Enemy, hopes to be poolside for some of the USA’s games in Paris. Replying to Steffens on Instagram, he pledged to “use all my relationships and resources” to support the team in the build-up to the Games.