Even over a Google Meet link — me in New York City, her in her home city of Atlanta — Johnson has the kind of extroversion that suggests the world hasn’t quite managed to sand her down. The longer she talks, the more I laugh. In watching her other interviews to prepare for our conversation, I noticed the same thing: the Flau’jae effect. When I point it out, she doesn’t offer a “Thank you,” but rather, “Facts,” as if to say, well, you’re not wrong. She shows off the quick wit and easy riffs of most Gen-Zers, but beneath all that energy she is composed — able to articulate even her most complex thoughts with care. Whether she’s speaking about her critics, referees, former partners, or friends, she rarely resorts to bitterness. There’s a grace in the way she describes those who may have wronged her: candid without being cruel. In an era when grievance can so easily become a personality, Johnson seems to have held onto something gentler.

You can see it in the way she interacts with her little brothers, Aydin and Nixon. Both are on set with her in Atlanta, popping in and out of view of the camera as she goes live on Instagram. On the night she was drafted, Aydin rushed the stage at her invitation, becoming a meme in the process. As Johnson stood there in a cutout mermaid gown, a fuzzy black shawl, and a jet-black bussdown, her younger brother was tucked beneath her in a purple Golden State Valkyries cap. It was a moment that belonged to both of them equally. 

Family, to Flau’jae, is above all else. She speaks about them unprompted, weaving memories of them and their quirks into conversations that have seemingly nothing to do with family at all. Johnson grew up in Savannah, Georgia, raised by her grandparents and Brooks. “My mama used to do Uber before it was Uber,” Johnson says. “In Savannah, Georgia, St. Patrick’s Day, the parade is like a huge thing, right? She would rent a white van. She would drive all the drunk people to their hotels, and she would do it all night. She would come home with, like, wads and wads of money. She was always just a hustler and had this business mindset.”

Although they never had the chance to meet, Camouflage’s legacy looms large in Johnson’s life, down to the way her name is pronounced (like “flauge,” the last part of his). She remembers listening to her dad’s album, Keepin It Real, when she was just six and feeling an inexplicable connection to it. “I’m talking about shit that I’m not supposed to know about. You listen to my dad’s music, he’s popping it,” she says. “I just connected with it, and it made me realize I wanted to do music. Like, I want to be able to tell stories like he did in that album. It really did change my life.”

When she was 12, Johnson appeared on Season 3 of Lifetime’s The Rap Game, a reality TV show that features aspiring young hip-hop artists competing in a musical boot camp. She made it to the final round but ultimately didn’t take home the So So Def Recordings contract (or the chain). 

As she got older and became more serious about music, she sometimes resented her father’s unshakable shadow. “My dad was my whole brand and identity as a rapper. I was Camouflage’s daughter,” she says. “And I was kind of irritated with it because I was like, I don’t want to just be known as the daughter of a famous rapper.”

Both father and daughter come with impressive credentials. Camouflage inked a deal with Universal Records and Pure Pain Records at just 18. Johnson, meanwhile, achieved her own milestone, signing a distribution deal under Jay Z's Roc Nation in 2022. Two years later, she released her debut EP, Best of Both Worlds, following 4 Wave and 4 The Lovers.  

Johnson’s remix of “Woah” with Monaleo will drop on November 6. She’s also working on an upcoming EP — or “mixtape,” as she calls it in true Southern fashion — although she’s keeping the details private. What she will share is how life itself has become her greatest writing tool. “My mama always told me, ‘Your music will get better when you experience more life.’ So I think just living and going through things and feeling emotions” has helped shape her process. “I make my best music when I feel everything I’m going through,” Johnson says. “It’s important for me to show, this shit ain’t all cake and ice cream.”

These days, the goal isn’t to supersede her father’s name, but to carry it forward. “Every time somebody hears a new song from me or hears a new story from me, in some way, my dad is going to be mentioned,” she says. “It’s building that whole Johnson line — making that name mean something.”

There wasn’t a girls’ team in their area so Johnson played with the boys. “I think that’s where she developed this dog mentality,” Brooks says. “She always wanted to be bigger and better than the boys so she worked harder, spent more time in the gym practicing so she could prove she should be there.”

That she would be drafted into the W was a no-brainer. But draft nights are a particular kind of nerve-racking theater. You wonder if you’ll land somewhere you don’t want to be, hear your name called lower than expected, or not hear it at all. For Johnson, the night took a turn few could have anticipated. After being selected eighth overall by the Golden State Valkyries, she was traded to the Seattle Storm 30 minutes later. Only a handful of players before her had experienced such a scenario, one of them being Kobe Bryant. “Everything happens for a reason,” she says, remembering what she told herself that night. “And one of my favorite players, Kobe, he got traded on draft night. The Charlotte Hornets traded him to the Lakers. Dumbest decision ever.”

Johnson played her rookie season with the Storm wearing the number 4 — “Big 4,” as she calls herself, emphasized with a Georgia accent. But it came to an early end; the Storm didn’t place for the playoffs. Still, she made new friends and learned new lessons. “I try to be intentional, especially with my teammates, about building bonds,” she says. “Even with the season that we had, a losing season, it kind of bonded us more together.”

Johnson talks about the legacy she wants to leave behind not as some far-off dream, but as something already taking shape. She often speaks in the present tense, sometimes even the past, as if the future she once imagined is already underway. 

Her latest step toward building that legacy was purchasing land — 20 acres to be exact — in Atlanta. “Growing up, we had to move around a lot. Now, for us to have something that nobody can ever take from us, that’s the biggest blessing,” she says. Her mother is already planning to build a house on the property. “My brothers, they gonna grow up with a freaking football field, a basketball court, and a trampoline park in their backyard. I’ve never had nothing like that,” she says. There’s something particularly poignant about what the purchase means to her, beyond the acreage and the amenities. “We used to work on those same fields,” she says, “and now I have the chance to own them, take that back and have some of that pride back.”

Still, beneath all the motion and the self-assurance, Johnson is only 23. Beyond her many roles as an entrepreneur, a basketball player, and a musician, she’s navigating some of the same questions that occupy many people her age, including finding a partner. “I’m in a great spot, romantically. I’m a lover girl. You know, I’m a Scorpio,” she says.

Johnson says she’s looking for someone who is “equally yoked.” Still, she’s quick to clarify: “I think that’s not really a priority in my life. I be trying to tell that to my friends: We need to build our life so that then, when love and marriage and kids come, we done did everything that we wanted to do.”

Looking at the life she has built, it seems like things just might work out — something Johnson would tell you herself. “I never worry because I have a whole bunch of prayer warriors on my side. I have a whole bunch of people that are conspiring for my dreams to come true,” she says. “I have a lot of people that want to see me win more than want to see me fail. And I feel my dreams are protected by that.”