The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flau’jae Johnson seeks fame in hoops, hip-hop
Flau’jae Johnson skipped up the steps of the school bus, slipped her phone out of her pocket and flipped the camera onto herself. She showed the diamonds of her “Street Execs” chain sparkling over her black Sprayberry High School warmups.
Then she showed off her freestyle rap skills, hyping up her teammates on the drive to play their rival, Kell High School. It was the Georgia Region 6-6A tournament final, and Flau’jae wanted her 684,000 Instagram followers to share in the moment.
By the time Flau’jae sent the Feb. 18 game to overtime with a deep 3-pointer, thousands of people had already streamed her story. By the time she got home from the game, dozens of fans had tagged her in the highlight of her game-tying shot. But she didn’t see those mentions. Her Yellow Jackets had lost in overtime. So after leaving the locker room, she drove straight to a studio, where she rapped until 2 in the morning, trying to vent all the frustration she was feeling — and trying to turn the thousands of melodies she has stored in her Voice Memos app into just a dozen tracks for her first mixtape. It’s what her dad would have done.
“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 the 18-year-old Flau’jae has faced in her relentless ascent over the past couple of years. As a basketball player, she’s a 5-foot10 combo guard who attacks the rim with abandon and can pull up from the logo. This month, she’ll play in the Mcdonald’s All-american Game. In April, she’ll be the only girl at the Iverson Classic, another elite showcase for amateur basketball stars. This summer, she’ll enroll at LSU to try to help coach 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’ll release that debut mixtape this spring.
If she had been born two years earlier, Flau’jae would have faced a choice between playing basketball and making money off her music. But in the wake of the NCAA relaxing its restrictions on name, image and likeness (NIL) rights, she doesn’t have to sacrifice one of her passions to preserve the other. Instead, she’s hoping these new rules allow her to become a bona fide star in both worlds.
“Music and basketball go together,” Flau’jae says. “Most people know me now as a basketball player, a Mcdonald’s All-american. 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 basketball, but he’s not a pro. Dame Lillard is a pro basketball player, and he makes music, but it’s secondary for him. For me, neither one outshines the other. I’m trying to shine through it all.”
Inspired by late father
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 housing projects of Savannah. 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 resume out. She’s going to be accepting resumes.”
He never got to see his prophecy fulfilled. On May 19, 2003, six months before Flau’jae was born, Jason was shot dead outside his Savannah studio. His
murder 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 murder 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 Jason’s memory.
After listening to her father’s music for the first time, Flau’jae asked if she could perform at the party. “Mom said, ‘Absolutely not!’” Flau’jae recalls, laughing. “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 started. 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 while she was waiting to perform. When Kia saw her sleeping, she was struck by the similarity: Jason used to snooze before shows, too.
“When she got on stage, I got emotional,” Kia says. “That girl is every bit 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 the age of 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 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 notoriously dour Simon Cowell said: “Right now, we are witnessing the start of somebody’s career, big time.”
In truth, they were witnessing the start of one of Flau’jae’s careers.
Moving to Atlanta
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. Flau’jae insisted on being dressed in Lakers gear. And Flau’jae could sit on the couch for hours watching Lebron James highlights, and run around the driveway imitating 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 experienced 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 shot, 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 connections had opened doors in the music business, Kia was uncertain how to help her daughter take the next step in basketball. She loved Savannah, but she blamed petty jealousies for Jason’s death, so she decided to move her family to Atlanta. Flau’jae found a bigger stage at Sprayberry, a 6-A high school in Marietta. Following her sophomore year, she joined FBC Bouncenation21, one of the best AAU basketball programs in the country. After a few months on the grassroots circuit, she went from unranked to No. 55 on the ESPN100.
“I don’t think she realized how good she was,” says Sprayberry coach Kellie Avery. “She does so much in her off time with her music that I don’t think basketball 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 all the names ranked ahead of her 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’s started to set her sights even higher. “She just texted 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 broken record after record, culminating with the school’s all-time basketball scoring mark, regardless of gender. But she’s no longer just a local phenom. Last month, Avery picked up $130 worth of Mcdonald’s and gathered the entire team in the locker room to see if Flau’jae would be selected for the All-american team. A camera crew for one of the two docuseries in development about her 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 said. “And she doesn’t doubt she can get it.”
‘Music was first’
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. “Music was first,” says Allen Parks, owner of Street Execs, the studio where Flau’jae records. “I think she played basketball as a kid as something to do. But her goal and her vision is to be an artist.”
It’s a testament to the dedication that Flau’jae demonstrates for each of her disciplines. To her, basketball and music are inextricably intertwined.