LSU women’s basketball star Flau’jae Johnson is staying the course.
The 20-year-old sophomore guard is one of the faces of the NIL era — reportedly making millions — an NCAA champion, rapper and full-time student.
Nothing about that is normal, but Johnson told The Post that she stays humble knowing she “beat the odds” in her native Savannah, Ga., and found success in Baton Rouge.
“My mom [and manager Kia Brooks] raised me and that just made me who I was,” Johnson told The Post ahead of March Madness 2024, which includes a Powerade national TV spot starring her.
“The whole city is like a dog eat dog. You gotta be one of the ones to come out of there and really make something of yourself. My mom really just took care of me and my brothers and did her best for us to make it out of there and she did an amazing job and was blessed to have it.”
The All-American guard is the daughter of Jason Johnson — a rapper, Camouflage, in the 1980s — who was killed in an unsolved shooting five months before she was born, according to Forbes.
In her first year at LSU, Johnson landed a record deal with JAY-Z’s ROC Nation — and played a key role in the Lady Tigers’ National Championship game triumph with 10 points, seven rebounds and four assists in a win 102-85 over Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes.
The 5-foot-10 spitfire is a magnet for headlines both on and off the court, due in part to her massive social media following.
Johnson has 1.7 million followers on Instagram, 1.4 million TikTok followers, 104,000 X followers and 195,000 subscribers on YouTube.
When it comes to dealing with the spotlight — including past criticisms about her song lyrics and social media rumors during teammate Angel Reese’s absence last fall — Johnson has her own formula.
“I mean, with that stuff, you deal with it internally with the team,” she said. “You really can’t listen too much to what social media says because everybody’s gonna have an opinion … you just look at the good.
“It’s kinda like you see what you wanna see. So, that’s why I don’t really be on social media like that in a way. I just focus on what I have going on.”
A piece of advice from one of her idols, LeBron James, keeps the “Big 4” rapper motivated to change people’s perceptions of her.
“LeBron told me to keep doing my thing and don’t ever stop,” Johnson said, adding that the Lakers superstar attended one of her shows, where they spoke in-person. “That’s something that I vividly remember him saying. That was the greatest [moment] for me.
“I was like, ‘Wow, absolutely.’ I love watching this man [play basketball]. That’s crazy.”
Johnson is able to juggle being an elite athlete, rapper, influencer and student by staying on a consistent schedule.
She only attends one college class in-person at LSU, and the rest online due to her busy travel schedule and work commitments.
Johnson briefly left Baton Rouge to open for Rod Wave at his concert in Atlanta in December 2023.
Johnson spoke with The Post before the recent on-court scuffle that broke out during the SEC championship on March 10, a 79-72 LSU loss to South Carolina.
Things turned physical after some trash talk between both teams escalated when Gamecocks center Kamilla Cardoso approached Johnson and shoved her to the ground.
The benches cleared and Johnson’s brother, 24-year-old Trayron Milton, jumped over the scorer’s table and rushed the court.
Milton was arrested and charged with assault and battery and disorderly conduct for his role in the incident, and was released from jail on bonds of $1,087.50 for each charge.
“It’s all been a blessing,” Johnson said of her accomplishments. “I think coming from the city that I come from and just beating the odds, I just try to stay humble. Anything materialistic, that doesn’t really matter.
“But when you do something where you can inspire people and you can change people’s perception and then they wanna follow you — I think that’s the difference-maker in everything … When people see me and they love me and they wanna support anything that I do, I think it’s because I inspired them and changed the perception. So I think things that are really, really important for me are just being who I am, coming from where I come from, and being able to change people’s lives and inspire them in a different way.”
LSU is the No. 3 seed heading into the NCAA tournament and could see top seed Iowa in an Elite Eight showdown — if both teams make it that far.
Johnson is featured in Powerade’s March Madness campaign, “March Doesn’t Start In March,” with USC guard Isaiah Collier, as both were announced as the brand’s newest athlete partners in January.