Shaquille O’Neal has far too many talents, something the world is finding out when he is 51 years old. He can most definitely act, (despite his Steel disaster). Of course, there was his basketball career as well. But more than anything else, the man has been spitting bars for years, even earning himself a record deal worth $10,000,000 for 3 albums. In fact, at one point, he put so much focus into his music, that a very big figure in the industry had to force him to put it all back into basketball.
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Shaq was so good at hip hop that to this day, he is the only NBA player with a platinum album. Better yet, that was his very first collection, with his second one hitting gold status too. You can even check out his best-performing song right here:
That said, no matter how much success he received, even given the $10,000,000 deal he had earned for his music, he had to be told to go back to basketball.
Redman had the displeasure of telling Shaquille O’Neal to go back to basketball
‘Redman’ is a big figure in the hip-hop industry, having made quite a bit of music himself. And of course, given the gigantic figure Shaq was at the time, the two met up with each other, something that was the genesis of a beautiful bond of mutual respect for one another.
Further, Redman had courtside seats to all of O’Neal’s musical success, hence having a damn good idea of his potential. However, even he understood the value of the time he was putting into music. And so, instead of encouraging his music, he ended up speaking against it to him. Here is the Instagram post by Hip Hop Stories, containing what he said on Vlad TV.
“Shaquille (O’Neal) is a cool dude, first of all. You know, when he got on, he was just like, ‘Yo, I’m from (New) Jersey, I’m from the bricks, Yo I love these dudes.’ And he was alright too, he was selling albums. Shaq got a Gold album! He was putting in work… Shaq followed us, he learned the platform, and how we do it, and what we working with, and we showed him how to do it too.”
“He was on the court… but Shaq, he put in work. You know, he could spit. He was doing records with the key dudes. He didn’t go to the top dudes, he went through the underground route… And we routed him on, and his career in basketball, ‘that’s enough rapping, get yo a** back out there on the court’, and he was winning so, big up to Shaq.”
Clearly, Shaquille O’Neal could have had it all, both on and off the court. And frankly, sometimes the world at large fails to recognize what a great talent he is. However, that doesn’t mean Shaquille O’Neal’s rapping stopped there. In fact, he once even had beef with Damian Lillard through diss tracks.
Shaq and Damian Lillard’s beef
Among NBA hoopers today, Damian Lillard is perhaps the best rapper there is. In fact, we’d even go as far as to say he is the best ever in this category. When it comes to the new generation of NBA stars who indulge in spitting a few verses on the side, Dame is leaps and bounds ahead of guys like Miles Bridges, Aaron Gordon, and Iman Shumpert.
So, when he and Shaq went about with diss tracks against one another it was one for the ages. The only other man in league history who could hold a candle to Dame’s talent was ‘The Big Aristotle’ himself. They went back and forth with diss tracks with D.O.L.L.A. releasing ‘Reign Reign Go Away.’
DJ Diesel went at him with a 4-minute track of his own.
The ‘beef’, which Shaq described as ‘just for fun’ led to the Oakland native’s mother commenting on it, which you can read all about right here.
