By ANDRE CHAMPAGNE, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter
The LSU women’s basketball team and coach Kim Mulkey welcomed a special visitor at their game Sunday in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Superstar rapper Torence Hatch Jr., a Baton Rouge native who goes by Boosie Badazz and formerly Lil’ Boosie, watched the Tigers beat Alabama State, 109-41.
Boosie has known LSU senior guard Flau’jae Johnson for most of her life, and Johnson has said that he is basically her uncle, though they are not related.
Johnson said recently on former NFL player Shannon Sharpe’s podcast, “Club Shay Shay,” that Boosie often helped her as she grew up because her father Jason Johnson – a rapper and friend of Boosie’s who went by the name “Camouflauge” – was murdered on May 19, 2003, in Savannah, Georgia, when he was 21 before his daughter was born. Flau’jae Johnson was born on Nov. 3, 2003, in Savannah.
“He showed me love and took care of me like I was his child, so he’ll always have my respect,” Johnson said on Sharpe’s podcast. “He came and looked after me. My mom never asked him for nothing, but if I needed it and my mom said, ‘I can’t do it,’ Boosie would come through. It was just crazy to me because I never had a father figure.”
After the game, LSU coach Kim Mulkey and players met Boosie for the first time.
“Well, they came and got me on the court and said, ‘Coach, Boosie would like to meet you,’” Mulkey said. “And he has a beautiful purple, almost like a velvet shirt. I said, ‘Well I like that shirt.'”
Mulkey then invited Boosie to the locker room.
“The kids don’t have their phones when I walk in the locker room,” Mulkey said. “Well, they were real brave today. They must have known I was going to let him come in the locker room. They were sprinting to get their phones, and they all had their phones. And he jumped on the big couch. They started singing one of his songs, and I just quietly came to see you guys. Yeah, that’s a memory. That’s a memory for all of them.”
And it may not be the last time Boosie goes to an LSU women’s game.
“I think he said, ‘I’m going to be back. Got to keep watching my niece,’” Mulkey said.
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