In Defense of Shaq's Music Career
In Defense of Shaq's Music Career
Did you know DJ Diesel used to play basketball?
The very first article I was ever paid to write was about the most unnecessary greatest hits albums of all-time. Perched atop the #1 spot on that list was basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal.
Confession time! I was playing fast and loose with the rules when I wrote that article. There is a big difference between “greatest hits” and “the best of” and, luckily for me, the dunderheads in charge of approving articles for that website at the time did not recognize that difference.
In my defense, that doesn’t make the existence of The Best of Shaquille O’Neal any less absurd. We’re talking about a “best of” compilation that was released two albums into his career. That would be like if Nirvana released a greatest hits album immediately after Nevermind.
However, just like “best of” doesn’t necessarily mean “greatest hits,” when it comes to The Best of Shaquille O’Neal, “unnecessary” doesn’t mean “not good.”
If I’m being completely honest, I think Shaquille O’Neal is the greatest rapper of all-time — among professional basketball players who’ve won at least one NBA championship (sorry, Dame Lillard).
Even without the championships qualifier, I’d say he’s easily the best rapper/athlete ever. I would even take it a step further and say he’s arguably the best “celebrity musician” ever.
You think it’s funny that Shaquille O’Neal raps? Well, have you ever heard David Duchovny sing?
Listen to all 30 minutes of that. I dare you. It is the sound of a man who hasn’t heard the word “no” in decades.
Meanwhile, at least for a while there, Shaq released a whole bunch of legitimately great 90’s rap songs. I’d love to embed some here but apparently YouTube only allows that now if the song sucks.
So, when I say Shaq’s 1995 single “No Hook,” for example, doubles as one of the very best early Wu-Tang Clan songs, you’re just gonna have to take my word for it (or click this link).
Sure, you can argue that what you (hopefully) just listened to is more of a Wu-Tang song featuring Shaq than it is a “Shaq song.” That’s fair, but that’s also what makes those early Shaq albums so great. He wasn’t the best rapper, and he knew that. But he was talented and confident enough to make his music debut live on The Arsenio Hall Show, one of the biggest late night programs in all the land at the time.
According to a 2014 Complex retrospective about Shaq’s music career, the day after that Arsenio Hall performance, Jive/RCA offered him a record deal. At their first meeting, he told them:
“I don’t want to rap by myself. My concept is to rap with all my favorite artists.”
Since this article already has a strong track record of making music comparisons people won’t like, let’s make another. Because if I’m not mistaken, the concept Shaq is describing is the same one we gave Carlos Santana like a hundred Grammy awards for in the late-90s/early-2000s.
I don’t care if you’re uncomfortable hearing Shaq mentioned alongside one of the best guitar players to ever exist. Carlos Santana couldn’t hoop, you know? Did you ever think about it that way? What’s more impressive, releasing two albums worth of music featuring some of the day’s hottest young stars while playing professional basketball or while not playing professional basketball? Checkmate.
Either way, your feelings are unimportant to the fact that Shaq’s first two albums (Shaq-Diesel and Shaq-Fu: Da Return) are, for all intents and purposes, the Supernatural and the whatever the next Santana album after that was called of rap music.
Shaquille O’Neal was insanely popular immediately upon his arrival in the NBA, so there was no shortage of rappers and producers who were willing to work with him. As a result, the beats on those first two albums are handled by a goddamn who’s who of the best rap music producers of the day, including the likes of Erick Sermon, RZA, Warren G and lots more.
Again, I would love to embed a few songs here to demonstrate how shockingly good those first two albums are, but YouTube won’t let me. Go listen to them for yourself if you don’t believe me.
That said, you’ve probably noticed that I keep saying “those first two albums.” He released four studio albums, though, provided we’re just talking rap music (more on that in a second). Those last two albums are … less good. A lot of that has to do with there being significantly fewer guests, or at least fewer that anyone would recognize by name.
The aforementioned Complex article about Shaq’s music career points to one of the culprits behind the lack of big name help on those last couple albums — the notoriously awful 1994 compilation album B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret.
You see, rapping is a lot like podcasting in that most people assume they could do it if they wanted to. It’s just words that rhyme. How hard can it be? The B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret compilation answers that question, and the answer is “very hard.”
Somewhere, someone assumed that if you liked listening to Shaquille O’Neal’s safe-for-kids brand of ‘90s rap, then you’d absolutely LOVE hearing Philadelphia 76ers point guard Dana Barros threaten to shoot you a bunch.
That, against all odds, is one of the better songs on that compilation, and it is still straight up trash. The album was so bad it understandably made rap artists and producers a little hesitant to work with basketball players going forward, and that cut into Shaq’s bottom line.
“The first time around, everyone wanted to record something with me. Now all of a sudden they’re calling up and saying they’ll do it but they want $200,000.”
Fewer high profile guests made Shaq’s ensuing work a lot less palatable, and eventually the music buying public lost interest.
To his credit, though, Shaq has mostly stuck with music, even if he wasn’t releasing albums this entire time. He even engaged in a minor and almost certainly staged-for-fun rap beef with Dame Lillard in 2019.
Also, like any good artist, Shaquille O’Neal never stops reinventing himself. In the years since he stopped releasing rap albums, the man formerly sometimes known as The Big Aristotle has taken up DJing under the name DJ Diesel.
In 2023, this endeavor culminated in Shaq doing the exact thing you probably always expected he’d do — he released a whole goddamn entire EDM album.
I’m not rolling on ecstasy right now, so I can’t tell you if Shaquille O’Neal/DJ Diesel’s Gorilla Warfare album is good or not, but I can tell you that the label it was released on seems to be pretty well respected in the field of EDM. They have seven million subscribers on YouTube, if nothing else.
At the end of the day, you can debate the quality of Shaquille O’Neal’s creative output all you want, but there’s no denying the man loves music and takes it a lot more seriously than your average celebrity musician. I think we can probably stop laughing at him about it and move on to making fun of something else.
I humbly suggest we pivot to mocking the rap career of former Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller instead.
He deserves it so much more.