MONDAY, MARCH 7 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU D3
something to do. But her goal and
her vision is to be an artist.”
It’s a testament to the dedica-
tion that Flau’jae demonstrates
for each of her disciplines. To her,
basketball and music are inextri-
cably intertwined. “When I go
through hard times, basketball
and music are both there for me,”
she says. “Basketball helps me
clear my head and get away from
it all. And then music is where I
let it all out and talk about it.”
Music is also a way to make up
for all the conversations she and
her father could never have. “This
is how I connect with him,” she
says. “This was something he was
so good at it. It was his thing.
When I realized I was good at it,
too, I realized this could be our
thing.”
When some college coaches re-
cruited her, they told her she
would have to quit music and
focus on basketball. She crossed
them off the list right away. But
Mulkey said she thought Flau’jae
could be the biggest NIL star in
women’s basketball, which
earned her commitment. “The
timing has really worked out per-
fectly for me,” Flau’jae says. “I’m
going to push my basketball and
my business and my music all at
the same time.”
Within the next few months,
Flau’jae will be on the biggest
amateur basketball stages in the
world. Within the next year, she
will be a star of at least two TV
shows. And after that, there’s like-
ly to be a M arch Madness run with
LSU to look forward to. In the
past year, NCAA athletes such as
Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and
Azzi Fudd have signed major NIL
deals based on their basketball
abilities. But Flau’jae has the po-
tential to be one of the first cross-
over NIL stars.
In the past, she wouldn’t have
been able to profit off her music,
even though it was separate from
her basketball endeavors. But
now she can sell her music and
advertise on her social media
channels on top of earning en-
dorsements as one of the best
young basketball players in the
country.
It could all sound like too much
for the average teenager, but
Flau’jae doesn’t feel that way.
During a FaceTime interview be-
tween her homework and her
late-night training (8 p.m.) and
recording (10 p.m.) sessions, she’s
asked whether she would like to
take some time off before heading
to LSU in June. “Yeah,” she says. “I
need a minute because I want to
do, like, hour-long YouTube epi-
sodes, and I’ve got to finish de-
signing the logo for my business
so that I can set up some mer-
chandise, and I need to start
streaming on Twitch, too.”
She pauses — a rare moment
for a girl who can talk as fast as
she raps. “I know it’s a lot,” she
says. “But I know what I’m here to
do. I have a legacy to fulfill.”He never got to see his prophe-
cy fulfilled. On May 19, 2003, six
months before Flau’jae was born,
Jason was shot to death outside
his Savannah studio. His killing
remains unsolved.
Kia didn’t tell Flau’jae about
her father’s death for years. She
would just say he was traveling.
After school one day when she
was about 7, Flau’jae burst
through the front door — and into
tears. Some of her friends had
found out about her father’s
death and teased her about it.
“The world can be so cruel,” Kia
said. So Kia told Flau’jae the full
story and decided to invite her to
an annual party she held in Ja-
son’s memory.
After listening to her father’s
music for the first time, Flau’jae
asked whether she could perform
at the party. “Mom said, ‘Absolute-
ly not!’ ” Flau’jae recalls, laugh-
ing. “She was like: ‘Girl, you’re 7!
Go pick up a book!’ ”
But Kia’s brother Dominique
convinced her that Flau’jae could
finish what her father had start-
ed. So Kia shifted into what she
now calls her “Momager” mode —
half mom, half manager. She
dressed Flau’jae from head to toe:
a Georgia hat with her ponytail
popping out, a red vest and — of
course — camouflage pants. The
party was at night at a club, and
Flau’jae fell asleep in the car as
she was waiting to perform.
When Kia saw her sleeping, she
was struck by the similarity: Ja-
son used to snooze before shows,
too.
“When she got onstage, I got
emotional,” Kia says. “That girl is
every spit of her father.”
Kia shared the video with
friends, and soon people were
asking for Flau’jae to perform at
kids’ birthday parties. From
there, Kia reconnected with some
of Jason’s old friends in the music
business and started asking
about opportunities for Flau’jae.
At 12, she was cast in Season 3 of
Lifetime’s “The Rap Game,” a
show that pitted five young artists
against one another for the
chance at a record deal with host
Jermaine Dupri’s label, So So Def
Recordings.
She was the first contestant
eliminated, but the appearance
caught the attention of producers
on “America’s Got Talent,” where
she wowed judges with her song
“Guns Down.” With a mouthful of
braces, she rapped:
Do you know what it’s like to
not have a father?
No one to talk to when you get
mad at your mama?
I know you ain’t gonna pick up
the phone, I still call you.
The reason that it hurts so bad:
I never saw you.
After one performance, the no-
toriously dour Simon Cowell said,
“Right now, we are witnessing the
start of somebody’s career.”
In truth, they were witnessing
the start of one of Flau’jae careers.“Raw emotions bring out the
best music,” Flau’jae says, “and
I’m never more emotional than
after a loss.”
The game was among the few
setbacks t he 18-year-old has faced
on her relentless ascension over
the past couple of years. As a
basketball player, she’s an electric
5-foot-10 combo guard who at-
tacks the rim with abandon, pass-
es her teammates open and can
pull up from the logo. This month,
she will play in the McDonald’s
all-American game. In April, she
will be the only girl at the Iverson
Classic, another elite showcase
for amateur basketball stars. This
summer, she will enroll at LSU to
try to help Kim Mulkey bring a
title to Baton Rouge. And as a
rapper, she already has 122,000
subscribers on YouTube and a
distribution deal with Jay-Z’s Roc
Nation. She will release that de-
but mix tape this spring.
If she had been born two years
earlier, Flau’jae would have faced
a choice between playing basket-
ball and making money off her
music. But in the wake of the
NCAA relaxing its restrictions on
name, image and likeness rights,
she doesn’t have to sacrifice one
of her passions to preserve the
other. Instead, she’s hoping that
these new rules allow her to be-
come a bona fide star in both
worlds.
“Music and basketball go to-
gether,” Flau’jae says. “Most peo-
ple know me now as a basketball
player, a McDonald’s all-Ameri-
can. That’s a major, major thing
for me. But it’s not all of me.
“I don’t feel like anyone has
ever done what I’m doing. Quavo
raps and he likes to play basket-
ball, but he’s not a pro. Dame
Lillard is a pro basketball player
and he makes music, but it’s sec-
ondary for him. For me, neither
one outshines the other. I’m try-
ing to shine through it all.”
Like father, like daughter
Jason Johnson wanted to give
his daughter the world. He only
had time to give her a name.
Better known as Camoflauge,
Jason was a product of the hous-
ing projects of Savannah, Ga. His
energetic delivery and profanely
honest lyrics about the struggles
of being raised in the streets made
him a star on the rise in the late
1990s. Before he turned 20, he
had a lengthy arrest record — and
a lucrative record deal with a
major label, Universal. When he
found out that his fiancee, Kia,
was pregnant, he wanted to give
his daughter a part of him: From
“Camoflauge” came “Flau’jae.”
At first, Kia didn’t care for the
name. She thought it would be too
hard for her daughter to get a
good job. But Jason countered:
“My daughter isn’t going to be
sending her résumé out. She’s
going to be accepting résumés.”
FLAU’JAE FROM D1
ing with the school’s all-time scor-
ing mark, regardless of gender. But
she’s no longer just a local phe-
nom. Recently, Avery picked up
$130 worth of McDonald’s and
gathered her players in the locker
room to see whether Flau’jae
would be selected for the all-Amer-
ican team. A camera crew for one
of the two docuseries in develop-
ment about Flau’jae’s journey was
crowded in among them. Avery
was anxious when she couldn’t
immediately find her star’s name
on the screen, but Flau’jae didn’t
flinch. When she saw her name,
she hollered and ran onto the
court. Her teammates followed,
still carrying their food. Using the
McDonald’s bags, she drew a 4 —
her number — at half court.
“She knows what she wants in
this world,” Avery says. “And she
doesn’t doubt she can get it.”‘Our thing’
The people who coach Flau’jae
are convinced basketball is her
true love. “Flau’jae is her rap
name,” says Maurice Kirkland,
her youth basketball and baseball
coach in Savannah. “Flau is her
sports name — her real name.”
And the people who produce
her music are equally convinced
— in the opposite direction. “Mu-
sic was first,” says Allen Parks, the
owner of Street Execs, the studio
where Flau’jae records. “I think
she played basketball as a kid asFlau’jae found a bigger stage at
Sprayberry, a 6-A school in Mari-
etta. After her sophomore year,
she joined FBC BounceNation21,
one of the best AAU programs in
the country. After a few months
on the grass-roots circuit, she
went from unranked to 55th in
ESPN’s national rankings.
“I don’t think she realized how
good she was,” Sprayberry Coach
Kellie Avery says. “She does so
much in her off time with her
music that I don’t think basket-
ball had balanced out until her
sophomore year. Then she was
like, ‘Maybe I could do both.’ She
got on the right AAU team this
year, and it showed.”
Her trainer, Rob Riley, took a
screenshot of t he names listed
ahead of hers and told Flau’jae,
“We’re going to get all of them.”
Since then, Flau’jae has moved to
the cusp of the top 25, and she
seems destined to become a five-
star prospect before she leaves for
LSU. She has started to set her
sights even higher. “She just text-
ed me and said: ‘I want to be like
Michael Jordan. I want to be the
greatest ever,’ ” Riley says. “And I
was like: ‘Finally! What do you
think we’re doing here?’ She’s not
staying up in the studio till 2 in
the morning and then coming to
see me at 5 because she wants to
be good. She wants to be the best.”
At Sprayberry, Flau’jae has bro-
ken record after record, culminat-Her first shot
Basketball was Flau’jae’s first
love. Kia installed a hoop in their
driveway for her son Tray, but it
was Flau’jae who begged to be
lifted up for a dunk every time
they were in the driveway. It was
Flau’jae who insisted on being
dressed in Lakers gear. And it was
Flau’jae who could sit on the
couch for hours watching LeBron
James highlights and who would
run around the driveway imitat-
ing not only his moves but also his
signature chest-slap celebration.
Kia couldn’t find a girls’ league
in Savannah, so Flau’jae played
with boys’ teams until she was 10.
In basketball, she first experi-
enced what it was like to make a
crowd ooh and ahh. Every time
she bulldozed her way to the
basket or crossed over an older
boy to launch an improbably deep
three-pointer, she was chasing
that cheer. “I can still remember
the look on her face after she
made her first shot,” Kia says.
“She heard the crowd going crazy
and looked up at me with this
huge smile.”
But while Camoflauge’s con-
nections had opened doors in the
music business, Kia was uncer-
tain how to help her daughter
take the next step in basketball.
She loved Savannah, but she
blamed petty jealousies for Ja-
son’s death, so she decided to
move her family to Atlanta.In h oops and hip-hop,Flau’jae is a rising starPHOTOS BY KEVIN D. LILES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
As a basketball player, Flau’jae Johnson is on the cusp of the top 25 in ESPN’s rankings. As a
rapper, she has a deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and will r elease her debut mix tape this spring.College Basketball