the heart of Times Square, afternoon sunlight fills a Manhattan recording control room as Flau’jae Johnson sits in front of a bank of screens and soundboards, staring at herself in outer space., the cover art for which she has pulled up on one of the monitors. In it, her face floats amid a deep-purple scene of nebulas, galaxies, and planets, along with a headshot of her late father, Jason Johnson, better known as the rapper Camoflauge, hidden among the stars.
Altogether, between the Roc Nation contract and numerous brand sponsorships that Johnson has inked in the wake of a landmark 2021 Supreme Court decision allowing college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness , her personal net worth is currently around $3 million, according to her publicist, Des Dickerson. As Johnson raps on “Came Out A Beast,” the fourth track onBut to understand what really sets Johnson apart, one need only look at the EP’s title.
Queuing up the track in the Times Square studio, Johnson leans back and rolls her hands with the hard rap beat as the voice of Lil Wayne fills the room, not only shouting out Johnson by name in his guest verse but also calling back one of her earlier lines: “ aand I don’t got a degree.” The song closes out with a wailing electric guitar solo from Weezy that Johnson didn’t know he was planning until the audio file landed back in her inbox during production.
A COUPLE MONTHS AGO, with basketball and class at LSU finished for the school year, Johnson retreated to her current home base of Atlanta and held what she describes as a “writing camp.” Over two days at a West Midtown recording studio, more than half a dozen producers swung by and dropped off beats for Johnson to freestyle over and feel out as potential future projects.
Other times she’ll write lyrics on her phone while sitting behind the wheel of her parked Jeep, or lay down samples on the recording equipment in her apartment, or squeeze in a studio session amid another packed off-day of filming NIL brand content. “I know I have to be so locked in on basketball that I try not to submerge myself into that life, because I can’t control myself when it comes to music,” she says. “So I have to give a healthy dose here and there.