Besides Jay-Z and Nas, Who Are the Top Rappers Shaquille O’Neal Has Collaborated With?

Get your AirPods ready, keep your fingers on that play button, and make sure your caps tilt at an 18-degree angle. Shaq Diesel is back! Three decades after he dropped his third album You Can’t Stop the Reign, Shaquille O’Neal is releasing it on streaming sites for the first time on Friday with something extra special. He dug deep into his library to pull out an old song that everyone thought was an urban legend. In the past decade, younger NBA fans have become used to ‘Dubstep Daddy’ Shaq doing the occasional rap collabs with GAWNE and Coyote or dissing Shannon Sharpe lyrically. The pre-streaming generation remembers a certain NBA star embodying the East Coast genre, whose albums were a staple in cars, and collaborated with the biggest names in hip-hop.

In 1996, Nas released the song, ‘Analyze This’ with Jay-Z and Tariq. Rumor has it the song had a Shaq version. This unreleased track, ‘No Love Lost’ is part of the new album, three decades after it was released. Epic as it is, it’s just another day for the OG rapper athlete and his famous rapper friends.

Shaq’s ode to an old friend

Rick Ross and Meek Mill reunited to celebrate basketball’s greatest duo in rhyme. After dropping ‘Shaq & Kobe’, they brought on one-half of the muse himself for a remix. Joining Shaq is the current favorite rapper-athlete, Damian Lillard. Thus, Ross and Mill stopped by TNT for the world premiere of the ‘Shaq & Kobe’ remix featuring Shaq and ‘Dame Dolla’.

The song glorified the Lakers dynasty led by O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, along with their respective legacies. Shaq’s verse, which he wrote himself, was mostly about self-glory though he raps, “I’ma bring the drama ’til I’m with the Mamba.” And that won’t be the only tribute in this song.

Shaq’s one song lost to grief

“Did a song with Biggie, it was all a dream,” Shaq boasted in the 2023 track. The NBA and hip-hop have intersected for as long as both existed. That’s how Shaq came to be friends with Notorious B.I.G. They’d collaborate on ‘You Can’t Stop the Reign’ in the album of the same name that dropped in 1996. This song is now on streaming sites for the first time but the 1996 version.

Shaq confessed he recorded an alternate version of ‘Still Can’t Stop the Reign’ with Biggie Smallz because he didn’t like the initial verse. But this song is unreleased and O’Neal doesn’t reveal if it would be unearthed.

Biggie was murdered in a drive-by shooting a year after the album was released. He was supposed to meet Shaq just before his tragic death and that still haunts him to this day.

DJ Diesel joins King of Pop

Shaq’s third album was full of collabs including Biggie, JayZ, Nas, Peter Gunz, Mobb Deep, and Bobby Brown. But it was the year before the album dropped that he proved he’s not just a wannabe rapper-athlete. He was a contributor to Michael Jackson’s hip-hop repertoire with ‘2 Bad’ from HIStory in 1995. Shaq’s moonwalk leaves a little to be desired but when he throws a line like, “Nine-five Shaq represent with the Thrilla,” he’s unmatched.

MJ would later sample Biggie’s verse from ‘You Can’t Stop the Reign’ on his 2001 track ‘Unbreakable’. It wasn’t however a traditional collab.

The unusual background of Shaq and Kobe’s rap feud

Where Bryant outdid Shaq in rings, he couldn’t match in music. His rap career was dodgy at best while O’Neal was being a menace dissing him in tracks. Interestingly, Shaq did try to give him a leg up in the rap biz. In 1998, the barely 20 Kobe featured in Shaq’s fourth album Respect.

The song ‘3Xs Dope’ was well before both three-peated. Even the contrasting flows in both their styles reflected the on-court partnership between an agile big man and an athletic youngster. But Bryant’s hip-hop career never took off like Shaq’s.

Stop gatekeeping, Ice Cube

Shaq collaborated with Ice Cube and other rappers on ‘Men of Steel’ from his movie Steel in 1997. Ice Cube would later bring Shaq and Dr Dre in an album he was executive producing. Dr. Dre composed ‘That’s Gangsta’ for Shaq. But on his recent appearance on The Big Podcast, they revealed that O’Shea Jackson scrapped the entire song because he didn’t want the ‘gangsta’ label sticking to Lakers star Shaq. This is a song we’d never hear too.

O’Neal had another collab with Dr. Dre fall through. He got most of his musician friends together like Common, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, Angie Stone, and Nicole Scherzinger in an album Shaquille O’Neal Presents His Superfriends. It had a track ‘That’s Me’ produced by and featuring Dr. Dre. This entire album was never released though apart from a couple of singles.

Recently, Shaq has stuck to dissing his frenemies and collaborating with underrated artists. He released an EDM album in 2023 and is focused on the trap genre a lot more lately. But a brand new rap album from DIESEL eludes us.

Stay tuned for more such updates, and to follow what Shaq’s ex-agent, Leonard Armato, has to say about the infamous Shaq-Kobe feud, Caitlin Clark’s Olympic snub, and more, watch this video.