Flau'jae Johnson Thinks People Disrespect Her Because She Raps And Plays Basketball. Is That True?

LSU Tigers women’s basketball star Flau’jae Johnson was quick to call out those who criticize her for being a rapper and a basketball player.

The only problem is, those people might not exist.

The Tigers edged the UCLA Bruins 78-69 in the women’s Sweet 16 earlier today. After the game, ESPN’s Holly Rowe talked with Angel Reese and Johnson (who led all scorers with 24 points). Rowe asked how Johnson’s offensive game has improved so much since last year, and the guard gave a surprising response.

"People are going to discredit me because I rap and I hoop, so I know I got to go extra hard," Johnson said.

Rowe responded by confirming that "She does rap, her new single is 'It Ain't My Fault (AMF),' but today, this win was your fault."

Johnson Has Put A Lot Of Work Into Her Rap Career

For those of you who don’t know, Johnson has released quite a bit of rap music. Since 2017, she has released 15 singles, 3 EPs, and one full length album. Johnson has just over 265,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, and her 2022 single, "Big 4," has 930,008 streams on the platform. 

I can’t say I’m a fan of her music (I listened to about 30 seconds of AMF before stopping), but I applaud her hustle. If you can release music on a fairly regular basis while balancing the demands of being a star player at the D1 level, you have my respect.

People Don't Actively Disrespect Johnson All That Much Anymore

At one point, Johnson did say that schools who were recruiting her in high school said that she either had to focus on basketball or music. So no one can fault her for feeling a little lingering pain from the people who doubted her.

But since she started her LSU career in 2022, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of substantial evidence to suggest that people think less of Johnson’s play on the court because she’s an artist. Other than the (unfortunately) typical online trolls, no one is aggressively disrespecting her work. The only time that people do say something negative about her music is when she uses lyrics that are disrespectful of 9/11.

I hope Johnson continues to excel in both areas for as long as she possibly can. But I also hope she doesn’t weigh herself down by thinking that people actively disrespect her for her work.