Flava is flavour (American flavor) written the way some people say it, with the r-sound dropped. You meet this spelling in hip-hop, street talk, and song titles, not in school essays or news reports.

It is almost never about food. It is the special feel something has — a person, a song, a neighbourhood, a way of dressing — that makes you like it, or think of it in a certain way. If someone “has flava,” they have style; they don’t disappear in a crowd. A track with flava has a distinctive vibe, a character you can hear. People stretch it the same way they stretch flavour: atmosphere, cool, the thing that makes this one different.

It is very informal, and it carries a scene with it. Using the spelling is a little like showing you hear the word from that world. Older or careful writing would say flavour, style, or character instead. Though actually, the idea is not new — English already used flavour for “the feel of a place or a piece of writing.” Flava is that idea in a street suit.