Inside the life of LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson: The star guard, rapper, and trailblazer

BATON ROUGE, La. — It’s almost pitch-black outdoors, round 10 at evening, when Flau’jae Johnson drives her black Nissan round the concourse of the PMAC, the basketball area the place she and her LSU teammates play. She parks near the entrance, making a makeshift spot, and hurries inside.

The area is totally empty. Quiet, nonetheless. There are not any cameras. Dressed in a easy grey tee, mesh shorts and purple Kobes, she shouldn’t be right here to be seen — however to hunt peace.
“I needed to feel the ball,” Johnson says.

Never thoughts that it’s the eve of the Tigers’ NCAA Tournament opener. She has already had workforce observe earlier, and ought to in all probability be asleep, however she felt compelled to return to the courtroom. Bouncing the ball more durable between her legs, she drills midrange elbow jumper after jumper. Then, she bricks a free throw. Upset with herself, she sprints up and down the courtroom as punishment.

Here, the senior guard blocks out every thing: Expectation. Doubt. Critics who declare she isn’t as devoted to basketball as she is to her different ardour, music. Johnson is a rapper who’s signed to Roc Nation, the label based by Jay-Z. But she is equally keen about hoops. Her coaches typically have to tug her off the courtroom. For most of her collegiate profession, she has labored out 4 occasions a day.

With twin careers in hoops and music, and a bulging NIL portfolio, she has redefined what it means to be a university student-athlete. She is one of many ladies’s basketball stars to earn NIL offers, together with Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and former LSU teammate Angel Reese. But Kim Mulkey, her LSU coach, says Johnson’s profile is such that “I don’t even think people know her last name. You just know — that’s Flau’jae.”

This is Johnson’s final weekend competing in Baton Rouge, and feelings are excessive. She’s embarking on a last national-championship quest after serving to the Tigers win one as a freshman in 2023. Johnson is the workforce’s coronary heart and soul. Her management, her pick-up-anyone-anytime power is as integral to the workforce as her potential to attain in the lane and arrange others for a shot — her favourite pastime. She has flourished in the No. 2 seed Tigers’ first two NCAA Tournament wins, scoring 24 factors in a 101-47 second-round victory over Texas Tech. The Tigers are actually in Sacramento and will face No. 3 seed Duke in the Sweet 16 Friday.

Johnson is on the brink of monumental change, anticipated to be selected in the WNBA Draft on April 13. The WNBA is in transition, too, having agreed to a brand new collective bargaining settlement final week that may permit gamers to earn more money than ever. “I came at the right time,” says Johnson, who’s well-positioned to navigate this uncharted territory, as she did when NIL was legalized shortly earlier than she entered faculty. She has created a blueprint for the subsequent era of multi-dimensional athletes.

But she has confronted difficulties that few understand. At occasions, she is the topic of intense vitriol on-line. LSU has needed to convey three safety guards on street journeys as she attracts throngs of followers after video games. And but, she retains a smile on her face, refusing to shrink. To select between hoops and rap. To be put into one field. Her mom, Kia J. Brooks, who can be her supervisor, has informed her since she was a younger woman: “People put ceilings on themselves, and you will not be one of those people.”

Johnson took that message to coronary heart. “A lot of us — and I’ve been guilty of it before — try to dim our light to make other people feel comfortable,” Johnson says. “But you have to let your light shine, because you know somebody else got that in them, too, and you will give them permission to let their lights on. And then? Everybody’s glowing.”

She smiles brightly, envisioning her subsequent chapter. She is lastly moving into her energy.

I made someone else consider in they dream ‘cause they seen mine.

(“6-foot-7 freestyle,” Flau’jae)

“That’s one of my favorite things I’ve written,” she says, sinking into her sofa inside her condominium in Baton Rouge. She had simply taken Champ, her bearded dragon, out of his cage. “He’s my spirit animal,” she says, letting him claw at her shirt. She isn’t scared; she genuinely needed to take her senior photos alongside LSU’s precise tiger mascot, Mike, in his cage advanced close to the stadium.

Johnson opens a stack of journals on her espresso desk. She writes to know. To really feel linked. Her life strikes so quick typically she will be able to’t at all times take a second to breathe: “It makes me calm. Makes me feel like I got stuff in control.”

A whiteboard says: “DREAM BIGGER.” A print of Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city” album cowl sits on a shelf. A poster of the Centre Pompidou museum in Paris commemorating its 1977 opening hangs on the wall. Framed pictures of her late father, Jason Johnson, a rapper recognized by his stage identify, Camoflauge, are close by. He was murdered in 2003 at age 21, simply six months earlier than Flau’jae was born. He is her largest inspiration and the motive she started rapping as a toddler.

Books fill her lounge cabinets, particularly enterprise books to assist her put together for the future: “The Psychology of Money,” “Why Should White Guys Have All The Fun?” amongst many others. She highlights and jots notes in the margins. “She doesn’t just read books,” says Bob Starkey, LSU affiliate head coach, “she absorbs them.”

“I want to be so big in the business world and impact people that I’ll never meet,” Johnson says. “My goal is to have a big corporation building in New York City and have all my companies run under it. … (If) your end goal is just to be the richest man on Earth, then I feel like you’re doing it wrong. What are you doing it for? That’s not impacting people. … I want to impact people.”

Johnson picks up “Forty Million Dollar Slaves” by William C. Rhoden: “This is when I started thinking about NIL deals differently.” It precipitated her to suppose extra about the economics and energy dynamics at play. “These schools been getting all this money, all these years. Billions and billions of dollars.” Sometimes she sees feedback on social media: Flau’jae is simply chasing a bag. But cash isn’t her motivation. “It’s a lot of misconceptions,” she says. “I think people think it’s about just collecting a check, and that’s it. But me, I take it serious on all aspects.” She aspires to be as philanthropic as she will be able to. Her publicist challenged her to offer NIL a brand new definition, and the two have been pondering: “Notable, Impact and Legacy.”

“I have more than enough,” she says. “(NIL) has set my family up for a long time, so it’s like, how do I help other people?” Every model she companions with agrees to take part in her non-profit efforts, both in activation or donation. She helped renovate the locker room at her alma mater, Sprayberry High School. She is in the course of of constructing her personal leisure middle in her hometown of Savannah, Ga. “I always say, use these four years to set up your next 40 years,” she says.

She thinks so much about her charitable targets, akin to serving to finish homelessness. She’s desirous about constructing useful resource facilities for girls in disaster — areas that present assist, stability and entry to alternatives. And she typically thinks about the place she got here from, about how exhausting her mom labored as a surgical dental assistant, ending a shift and then staying up till 3 a.m. working different jobs akin to catering or driving purchasers.

“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” Johnson says. “I’m a young girl. A young Black girl from Savannah, Georgia. Born without a dad. Like, I’m supposed to be a statistic. For real, for real. I’m still supposed to be in Savannah working fast food or something.

“I’m not doing it for validation,” she says. “If I was doing it for validation, I should have been done.”

It’s a Wednesday afternoon, two days earlier than the begin of the NCAA Tournament, and Johnson arrives at a neighborhood highschool for a video shoot. She introduces herself to every member of the six-person crew, as in the event that they don’t know who she is. She doesn’t act big-time. Mulkey definitely gained’t permit it. “She cussed me out this morning!” Johnson says, laughing. An enormous gentle hovers close by, casting a glow on her near-back-length flowy hair. Soon, she’s requested to movie a video for one sponsor, then assessment one for an additional. “She’s a pro’s pro,” says James Parlow, her basketball coach. She has three calendars, every second meticulously deliberate.

Adjusting to her fame has taken time. Freshman 12 months, she felt overwhelmed by the consideration. Once, she was mobbed whereas selecting up meals from Chipotle. She escaped to her automobile and cried. And the extra success she had on the courtroom, serving to flip LSU right into a powerhouse, and in the sales space, working with legends akin to Public Enemy and Lil Wayne, she’d always be requested the identical query: “Would you rather win a national championship, or a Grammy?” The query at all times felt limiting. Sometimes, beneath was the suggestion that she needed to be extra devoted to 1 over the different. “Sometimes people put their fears on you,” Johnson says. “Just because they can’t do it, they feel like you can’t.”

“That’s why fear is so lame,” she says. “It’ll scare you into not doing something.”

She is aware of firsthand. In early February, she needed to put up on social media about new music she was excited to launch. But then she hesitated. It was a wierd feeling — worry. She apprehensive what individuals would suppose; that she wasn’t devoted sufficient to basketball. The Tigers have been about to play South Carolina: “I just didn’t want people to be like, ‘She needs to focus, or she ain’t this.’”

“I felt trapped,” Johnson says, “with other people’s opinions of me. … I felt like I wasn’t me. And then I was like, ‘How am I gonna tell my message?’ My message is to tell little boys and little girls to go chase your dreams, be who you are. I can’t say that, and then I’m scared to do it.”

She realized she needed to be herself — totally. No ceilings. A assured individual, she was studying, might have moments of doubt. That didn’t diminish her energy; it made her extra resilient.

That has been an ongoing lesson. Around final December, she was placing an excessive amount of stress on herself. “I almost did lose my joy a little bit,” she says. “Because everything started to feel more like pressure in the business, more than just playing the game that I love. … There’s so many critics. … It starts seeping into your mind.”

She turned to her journals, to her music. “Trying to figure out how to get myself out of a hole,” she says. An in depth pal helped her understand that social media is simply noise; these strangers don’t know her. “This is why I stopped giving a f—, for real,” she says. She has been off social media for 3 months. She additionally started to see a sports activities psychologist. She leaned into her gratitude observe, appreciating tiny joys: sweet-scented candles, consuming blue crabs on her porch, biking to highschool every day.

Soon, she felt herself taking again her energy. “It was all just me realizing that I was in control.” Power, to her, meant: “To be able to live freely in a world where everybody’s mind is trapped by outside things. That’s real freedom.”

She began feeling like herself on the courtroom once more, too: full of pleasure, bouncing round, hyping up her teammates. “I got back to my positive, my confident self,” she says. “Look at ‘The Alchemist,’” she says, selecting up her all-time favourite guide. She reads a quote from the novel: “What’s the world’s greatest lie? … At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

After her video shoot, Johnson drives to Barracuda Taco Stand. She’s excited to eat on the patio. She normally can’t try this, given the crowds that comply with her, however decides to take an opportunity tonight. This is her final weekend enjoying in Baton Rouge, in spite of everything. She orders three beef tacos — no onions. “Gas!” she says. “So fire.”

Then a younger man introduces himself. He says he makes beats and wonders if she’d hearken to them. Johnson is variety and offers her assistant his quantity. A couple of minutes later, two older Black ladies strategy. “Is it my lucky day!?” one of them gushes. “May I have your autograph, Flau’jae?”

“Of course,” Johnson says, leaning in for a photograph. Her pal is overjoyed: “This will be bragging rights with my middle school kids!”

It’s a stupendous evening. The muggy Louisiana warmth has cooled. Fireflies circle. It happens to Johnson how a lot she’s going to miss all of this. How it’ll all at some point change into reminiscence.

I like to inform ′em that my story had began earlier than I used to be born

I got here in a household, it already was torn

My momma couldn′t smile when she had me, she needed to mourn

They killed my pop whereas I used to be in her womb, I wasn’t even fashioned

(“Remember When,” Flau’jae)

Writing, rapping about her father helped Johnson course of her ache. She got here to know him via his phrases. She typically thinks of his music, “No Love”: It’s too late to avoid wasting us, however we bought to avoid wasting these children. “That’s when I realized what kind of person he was,” Johnson says.

At the time of his demise, Brooks couldn’t wallow in her grief; she needed to increase her kids and maintain issues collectively. “That was really a vulnerable moment for me but I knew that God gave me that job for a reason and I had to make sure that she understood that her story was to help others be great and that she had to fulfill this,” Brooks says.

Somehow, Johnson knew what she needed to do from an early age. Brooks remembers Flau’jae’s first ballet recital at age 4. “Everybody was smiling except for Flau’jae.” She remembers Johnson bursting into tears and saying afterward: “I don’t want to do this. I want to play basketball!”

Flau’jae turned a contestant on the Lifetime actuality collection “The Rap Game” at 12, and then on “America’s Got Talent” at 14. “I felt like I couldn’t fail,” she says. “I always felt like I was battling something different. Like my father. I never got to meet him, and continuing his legacy was something that I always felt strongly about. It’s deep within my soul. And so, I felt like I never could fail. And I felt my mom had put so much into it.”

Honing her type, she listened to ladies rappers who impressed her, akin to Lauryn Hill. “Her being a Black woman — and a dark-skinned woman — just being so soulful and so powerful. She’s a trailblazer and she moves at the beat of her own drum.” (Johnson coincidentally frolicked with Wyclef Jean, Hill’s bandmate with the Fugees.)

One of the causes Johnson got here to LSU was as a result of Mulkey was supportive of her music. Some different faculty recruiters weren’t as welcoming. Johnson had labored her means up from a lesser-known hoops prospect to a McDonald’s All-American.

As quickly as she stepped on campus, she made her mark on the workforce, beginning as a freshman. But her largest wrestle was studying relaxation: “I used to work myself to death.” “She was worried if she was resting,” Starkey says, “somebody wasn’t, and they’d pass her up.” Starkey would inform her: “If you keep cutting and cutting and cutting, the blade’s going to go dull and not be as effective.”

She prioritizes restoration rather more nowadays. But even with a protracted day the evening earlier than this 12 months’s NCAA Tournament opener, together with an accounting examination, she insisted on attending Miracle League, a baseball league for particular wants children that she was launched to final 12 months. She has quietly come again on her personal — no cameras. One of the children, Max, got here to LSU’s Selection Sunday occasion. “I have a game this Thursday,” he informed her. “You better come!”

When she confirmed up, the children screamed “Big 4!!!!” She went out to the mound, and her aggressive juices kicked in. “We here!” “Make a play at third!” Max stepped as much as the plate, hitting a homer. “YEAHHHHHH, BRUH!!!” Johnson screamed, chest-bumping him. “LET’S GO MAX! TURN ME UP, MAX!!!!”

This is when she is happiest: cheering for others, all misplaced in the identical glow.

Later that evening, Johnson returns to her condominium. She enters her studio in a again room. There is her mic and different recording gear. Her jerseys from highschool and faculty grasp on the partitions. She wonders which WNBA jersey she’ll grasp in her future dwelling.

“This is all getting packed up,” she says, a hint of unhappiness in her voice.

She turns to a canvas in the entrance of the room. Painted are her lyrics:

My chocolate is gorgeous,

I’m rockin’ it per traditional.

It’s from her 2022 freestyle “Ready or Not,” a pattern of the Fugees basic.

It’s getting late. She grabs her backpack to return to campus for one final exercise.

Finally perceive my energy,

my presence is essence …

… Ready or not

Here I come.