South Carolina suspends women’s basketball DJ, apologizes to Flau’Jae Johnson

South Carolina has suspended its DJ hired for women’s basketball games and apologized to Flau’Jae Johnson for what it calls an inappropriate song selection aimed at the LSU star.

The Gamecocks defeated the Tigers 66-56 on Friday night in Columbia. At the end of the game, Shejay T.O. played the instrumental to the song “Cut Friends” by Camoflauge, who died in 2003 6 months before his daughter, Flau’jae Johnson, was born.

Social media posts brought attention to the controversy. DJ T.O. responded to a tagged Instagram post by adding “my bad” surrounded with an emoji covering its mouth with a hand and a crying laughing emoji. Johnson posted a screenshot on X, formerly Twitter, saying she would own the loss but called out the “nasty” behavior saying it was not funny.

I’ll take my L on the chin, but this just nasty behavior. Nun funny bout that pic.twitter.com/BKYGgGvfGo

— Flaujae 4️⃣ (@Flaujae) January 26, 2025

DJ T.O. took to X on Saturday evening, posting an apology.

I apologize for playing Cut Friends Instrumental at the game yesterday. 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

— DJ T.O. (IG: shejayto) (@shejayto_) January 26, 2025

The apology did not stop South Carolina from taking action and suspended DJ T.O. for a game. The program released a statement Sunday, apologizing to Johnson.

We are addressing Friday night’s inappropriate in-game song selection and subsequent Instagram post by the DJ who is hired to work our women’s basketball games. Her actions were understandably upsetting to Flau Jae Johnson and her family and disrespectful to the LSU program and fans. 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, and we apologize to Flau’Jae, her family and LSU. As a result of her actions, DJ T.O. will be suspended for the next women’s basketball home game, and we will meet with her to provide further education on our expectations of her in the future.

After improving to 19-1, South Carolina is on the road Monday to face Tennessee. The Gamecocks are back home next Sunday to host Auburn.

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.