SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 27: Flau’jae Johnson #4 of the Louisiana State Tigers takes a shot over Ashlon Jackson #3 of the Duke Blue Devils during the first quarter in the Sweet Sixteen of the 2026 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament at Golden 1 Center on March 27, 2026 in Sacramento, California.(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images) 
By Kimberly Wilson ·Updated April 11, 2026 < /> Getting your Trinity Audio player ready… By the time most people are figuring out what they want to do with their lives, Flau’jae Johnson has already been doing two of them professionally.
At 21, the ball player and rapper is currently finishing out her final season at LSU as a projected top-five WNBA draft pick, running campaigns for PUMA, BODYARMOR and e.l.f. Cosmetics, holding an ownership stake in the Unrivaled women’s basketball league, and releasing music that has already earned co-signs from Quavo, Kehlani and J.I.D.
For her, it was never a choice between basketball and music. She’s been building both careers at once since her teens. And we know everyone loves to say we all have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé, but no one is using them as effectively as Johnson.
“It’s business as usual,” she tells ESSENCE. “I’m just excited to let everything flourish. I feel like everything’s coming all at one time, so it’s super exciting.”
On The Flaumix Tape, her new 19-track project, Flau’jae goes straight for the jugular. She goes after Future’s ‘March Madness,’ Lil Wayne’s ‘6 Foot 7 Foot’ and the Fugees’ ‘Ready or Not,’ three records most people wouldn’t dare touch, and she takes on all of them.
“I want to get on everybody’s beat and let people know that I can really rap or outrap you on your beat,” she says. “It’s kind of a competitive thing, kind of like a basketball player playing ones. I feel like as a rapper, you get on somebody’s beat, you have to do it justice or do better than they did. So that’s kind of the mentality I have coming on. I’ll show you I could hop on it and kill it.”
The Flaumix Tape isn’t the only thing she’s dropped. She also released “One of a Kind” earlier this year, a project she describes as overdue after not dropping anything since an R&B release in early 2024. “Courtside with the Walk of Ad lib,” she says of one of the records, adding it was “a cool little taster, a little appetizer for what’s to come.” Her earlier Best of Both Worlds already had features from Lil Wayne, NLE Choppa and 2Rare, so that foundation was already laid.
What she listens to when she is not making music might surprise you for someone who just spent a project going bar for bar with Future and Lil Wayne. “They [Adele and Alicia Keys] make me feel the music in my soul,” she says. “When I can feel it like that, it touches a different nerve in my body. That’s what music is supposed to do. It’s supposed to make you feel things so much.”
Out of everything on her plate right now, the e.l.f. partnership is the one that seems to light something up in her. “I’m venturing into the beauty space and I’m very excited,” she says. “To have a partner like e.l.f. Top Shelf, I’m excited to be a part of it.”
If e.l.f. is about where she’s going, PUMA is about where she started. Her PUMA collection is the most personal thing she has put her name on. She designed it with her father and her hometown of Savannah, Georgia embedded into the shoes. “I’ve always wanted to, when I got a platform, use it to show my dad and represent for his legacy,” she says.
“It’s just a small, beautiful town. Everybody knows everybody.”
She took that Savannah foundation to Baton Rouge and women’s basketball exploded while she was right in the middle of it. “I was literally right in the middle of everything kind of blowing up and going crazy,” she says. “And I’m really one of those figures that have the ability to trailblaze and change things for younger girls coming after me.”
So when you ask about legacy, it doesn’t feel abstract. For everything she has put her name on, what she actually wants to leave behind is simpler than any of it. “Just being the anomaly,” she says. “Not being the status quo. Being different and being who I am.”
She has been proving that since before most people knew her name.
The post Flau’jae Johnson On The WNBA Draft, New Music And Building Two Careers At Once: ‘This Is What I’m Supposed To Be Doing’ appeared first on Essence.