How Flau'jae Johnson's family 'put all the eggs in the pot' in NIL era

ATLANTA – When LSU rising sophomore guard Flau’jae Johnson‘s mother, Kia Brooks, negotiates potential brand deals that would utilize her daughter’s name, image and likeness rights, she said she has a simple yet potentially very lucrative proposition for executives.

“I’m like, ‘Listen, if you can find somebody on your roster that’s a Flau’jae, we’ll do the deal for free,'” Brooks told On3. “They can never find one, so that’s where my leverage comes in to work these deals and get the maximum for what she deserves.”

In the NCAA’s NIL era, countless brands and publicists chase earned media coverage with flashy adjectives like first-of-its-kind and unprecedented. However, Johnson – a former top-30 recruit turned national champion, the 2023 SEC Freshman of the Year and an artist who signed with Jay-Z‘s label Roc Nation in 2022 – actually is.

As an artist, she goes by her first name. In her song “Big 4,” Flau’jae raps, “I gotta Puma deal, I don’t get into Js” – the former being a nod to her shoe deal and the latter a reference to the ever-popular Jordans. Later in the song, she raps, “Got a few NIL, got a few deals.”

In addition to Puma, Johnson has partnered with companies such as Campus Ink, Doritos, LG Electronics, Meta, Papa John’s, Powerade, Raising Cane’s and Taco Bell. Brooks said her daughter is earning millions. That’s plural – with an “s” at the end.

“We want to deal with the bigger brands, the bigger dollars, and actually let people know like this is who we deal with, with shoes,” Brooks said. “This is who we deal with for her drink. We want to separate it without having millions of deals.

“We want the big deals. That’s what we want.”

It has been Johnson’s family, particularly her mother, who has helped guide her to becoming a singular star with multiple talents in college athletics’ modern era of brand building and player empowerment. Johnson has built one of the most valuable brands in college athletics.

“I want to thank my mom cause she’s really got me this far, being a mom, being my manager, negotiating all my NIL deals, from my shoe deals to my local deals in Baton Rouge so I want to thank her,” Johnson said during her acceptance speech at the INFLCR NIL Summit, where she was named Innovator of the Year. “I just want to say, man, I’m blessed, honestly. Just being in a position to be able to profit off my music and my name, image and likeness being a basketball player and a rapper.”

Kia Brooks: ‘I’m my daughter’s agent’

Flau’jae Johnson’s late father, Jason Johnson, was an artist who performed under the name of Camoflauge.

When Johnson’s mother and stepfather, Ameen Brooks, each described their respective roles in her life, those labels alone aren’t descriptive enough.

“I don’t even call it stepdaddy because I feel like as a position of a dad and I married her mom, it’s like filling the gap,” Ameen Brooks said. “Kia’s father got murdered. My father got murdered. Even Flau’jae’s father was murdered. She never got to see her real father, so just filling in that gap to whatever Kia already had built with being a single-parent mother. That’s the most (important) part.”

Brooks described the family as being on a singular mission.

“Just everybody gotta put all the eggs in the pot,” he said. “So what my wife did, she put aside her job. She was doing dental. I put aside my job, and we just became entrepreneurs on our own. She was doing cooking and I was painting houses and stuff. But we were still working full throttle with Flau’jae and when everything had hit home, now it’s really hitting home.”

LSU guard and rapper Flau’jae Johnson’s mother Kia Brooks:

“Flau’jae’s going to be getting a Grammy really soon. That’s all I got to say. We got a national championship. We’re going back for Year 2. It looks like, you know, we can repeat, so her résumé’s going to be long.” pic.twitter.com/4KgPdLt3H1

— Andy Wittry (@AndyWittry) June 4, 2023

Johnson has six or seven-figure followings on nearly every one of her social media platforms. She has 1.4 million followers on Instagram and 1.2 million on TikTok, more than 168,000 subscribers on YouTube, roughly 111,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and 95,000 followers on Twitter.

Here’s how Kia Brooks describes her do-it-all role of a mom and manager.

“It’s a difference,” Brooks said. “I’m not just a mom. I manage her and have been managing her for the last 11, 12 years. So, it’s a difference between me and the other moms. I’m really out here working. I’m really out here grinding. I’m really out here building connections and getting with these brands and working out deals and closing them. I’m my daughter’s agent. She doesn’t have one so I manage a lot.”

DJ Khaled, Lil Wayne, Wyclef Jean have reached out

Brooks said Wyclef Jean, who’s a three-time Grammy Award winner as an artist and producer, reached out after Johnson released her own version of “Ready or Not” by Fugees, a hip-hop group Wyclef Jean was a part of with Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel.

“He was like, ‘She killed it,'” Brooks said.

“It’s crazy I’m the one they want to represent,” Flau’jae raps over the artists’ beat early in the song. “Young Black girl, I could probably be the President.”

A painting of her father, along with the years of his birth and death, hung on a wall in the background.

“It’s amazing. I’m actually working with something with Wyclef right now,” Johnson told On3. “I’m super excited. It’s going to be a dope track for a good cause. It’s just cool being noticed by the greats for something that I do. It’s amazing.”

Lil Wayne and DJ Khaled have reached out, too.

“He’s just a supportive guy,” Brooks said of DJ Khaled. “He wants to help women’s basketball. He couldn’t believe we were out there balling like that. He was like, ‘Whatever I gotta do, I’m gonna get on the track. I got you. Send me the track.'”

There’s a line from the Drake song “Thank Me Now” that’s applicable here, yet still somehow incomplete:

“Damn, I swear sports and music are so synonymous
“Cause we want to be them, and they want to be us“

Remarkably, Flau’jae Johnson is both.

Flau’jae Johnson’s lyrics come ‘right from my soul’

Flau’jae Johnson announced her college commitment through a song titled “All Falls Down,” which included a music video featuring Baton Rouge-based rapper Lil Boosie, who mentioned Johnson’s father in a song released in 2006, a few years after his death.

Johnson said her lyrics come, “Right from my soul. It comes from where I come from – Savannah, Georgia. Just being who I am but also, you know, the things you go through make you as a person and I want to share that cause other people may be able to relate.”

Those lyrics include her experiences as a rapper and high-level basketball player – one whose college career, fortunately, started during the NCAA’s NIL era. Kia and Ameen Brooks each independently cited the fortuitous timing of Johnson’s college career.

She appeared on “The Rap Game” and “America’s Got Talent” as a teenager before recently returning for an appearance on “America’s Got Talent: All-Stars.”

“Everything we’ve done in the beginning has got us to this point,” Kia Brooks said. “All of the TV shows. I don’t think nobody else has her resume.”

Her first year of college was the second year of the NCAA’s NIL era.

“It’s timing. We’re in the right time,” Ameen Brooks said. “NIL, it just started last year so coming in was a blessing and coming in the second year because the first year was like a little shaky. When you get in the second and third, things (are) getting a little better.”

Later, Kia Brooks made the same point.

“It’s like Flau’jae fell in the laps of NIL,” she said. “Which could only have been a godsend because the first year was her high school year, where they were trying to work out all the kinks and things like that. And then she comes in and it’s like they figured out, ‘Oh, this is really working,’ and now she’s making millions of dollars because her brand was built from what I’ve done.

“Her brand was built and it was built in a structure to where it’s squeaky clean. You’ve got a rapper that’s not doing the norm. She’s actually speaking and has content she’s speaking about that it’s actual substance.”

‘Flau’jae wants to be that Grammy Award-winning national champion’

At the INFLCR NIL Summit, Flau’jae was also the featured entertainment, performing for hundreds of her peers and industry professionals at the College Football Hall of Fame.

“Man, freshman year is one for the books,” a smiling Johnson said after her set and in between posing for countless photos. “Nothing I could’ve ever dreamed of. You know, I knew I wanted to be SEC Freshman of the Year. I knew I wanted to win a championship but I didn’t know it was going to be attainable that quick.”

After that freshman year, where does she go from here?

“Flau’jae is gonna be getting a Grammy really soon,” Kia Brooks said. “That’s all I got to say. We got a national championship. We’re going back for year two. It looks like we can repeat. So, her resume is going to be long.”

What does Johnson say her goal is as a musician?

“Man, to change lives,” she said. “To impact people and change lives. I feel like I can do that.”

Johnson has three more years of eligibility to use as her profile is likely to grow on the court and on tracks. In a tweet in May, LSU President William F. Tate IV said that the WNBA “business model is suboptimal. Players are better served in college or with other transparent options to aspire.”

As Brooks said, Johnson is earning millions of dollars.

“Flau’jae wants to be that Grammy Award-winning national champion,” Brooks said. “She wants to do something that’s never been done and she’s already accomplishing that at only 19.”

For anyone who has a question about Johnson’s future, she has already answered it with a question of her own from the first verse of “Big 4.”

“Are you gonna rap or be an athlete?
“If I’m still doing both, why you asking me?“