Shaquille O'Neal receives backhanded compliment from Kendrick Lamar's 'Meet The Grahams' producer The Alchemist
Hall of Famer Shaquille O'Neal received a bit of a backhanded compliment from rap producer The Alchemist this week. The famed producer has been in headlines quite a bit lately because of his work on Kendrick Lamar's song, Meet the Grahams amid his ongoing beef with Drake. In an unexpected turn of events, the producer cracked a joke at Shaquille O'Neal's expense.
The four-time NBA champion has been a part of the music industry for many years now both as a rapper and as an EDM producer. During his NBA career, O'Neal had notably released a series of albums starting with Shaq Diesel. The following year, he then released his sophomore album, Shaq Fu: Da Return.
From there, O'Neal decided to sign with Interscope and A&M records for his third and fourth studio albums: You Can't Stop the Reign and Respect. During that time he founded "T.W.Is.M" (also known as TWIZM), a label that stood for "The World Is Mine".
When A&M fell under the Universal Music Group umbrella shortly before the turn of the century, O'Neal's TWISM landed as part of Universal. Since then, there has been little news regarding the label. In a recent post on social media, The Alchemist cracked a joke about the acronym:
"You can only hope that in your lifetime the stars will align for you in a magical form and you can witness god’s work like that one day when Shaq came up with TWIZM."
Looking at Shaquille O'Neal's music career, and recent album release
While Shaquille O'Neal is still releasing music, and most recently released an EDM album titled Gorilla Warfare he did so under another label, Monstercat. The label is one that operates within the EDM space, marking a big shift for Shaquille O'Neal as he pursues other musical endeavors.
In recent years, O'Neal has been exploring the EDM space, and has found a home for himself within the bass-driven genre. As he has explained in recent years, the first time he went to an EDM show, he felt the same adrenaline as when he was playing in the NBA Finals.
Because of that, he decided to release an EDM album last summer, however, he is now focusing on rap music once again. Over the course of 2023, O'Neal featured in a song titled RINGS with rap group Coyote.
More recently, he and Coyote teamed up once more for a song titled 3 Lokos, which has marked the Hall of Famer's return to rap in a big way. While some may have thought that his time in the rap game had come & gone, the Hall of Famer is getting back in the booth more and more as of late.
While he has yet to announce his next album, if his recent releases and features are of any indication, he could very well have something in the works.