When the University of South Carolina and LSU women’s basketball teams meet each other on the court, it’s bound to be a serious battle. But things got especially tense after a January 24 face-off between the two top-10-ranked teams when a DJ entertaining fans at the stadium played a song that some thought was an especially low blow to one of LSU’s star players.
After LSU lost the game, DJ T.O., who was entertaining South Carolina fans at their home stadium in Columbia, played the song “Cut Friends” by the late rapper Camoflauge. However, Camoflauge, whose real name was Jason Akeil Johnson is LSU star player Flau’Jae Johnson’s father, who was killed in 2003 – nearly six months before she was born.
Johnson responded to T.O.’s song choice with a January 25 post on X, writing, “I’ll take my L on the chin, but this just nasty behavior. Nun funny bout that.”
The University of South Carolina’s athletic department issued a statement on X apologizing to Johnson, her family and the LSU fans.
“Her actions were understandably upsetting to Flau’Jae Johnson and her family and disrespectful to the LSU program and fans,” the statement read. “Conference rivalries and passionate fan bases should only serve to enhance sports, not be used to target individual players personally. We regret that it came to that in our venue after a game that saw both teams capture the level of national attention that women’s basketball has earned.”
DJ T.O., who was suspended for the next home game, also issued an apology on X for playing the song, saying she grew up listening to Camoflauge’s music and never meant to upset anyone with the song choice.
“It is never my intent to disrespect anyone or offend anyone when my job is to have fun and make sure other people have a good time. I’m from the Lowcountry/C-Port area so I’ve been playing it for years, even at other games, but I shouldn’t have played it at yesterday’s game,“ she said.