In his early days of playing in the NBA, Shaquille O’Neal was a budding rap artist in his own right. The basketball player signed to Jive Records in 1993 and the same year dropped his debut album, Shaq Diesel. He would go on to release four more with plans to drop a fifth, though his final project was ultimately canceled.
Decades later, O’Neal is gearing up to re-enter the music industry. Today, the NBA Hall-of-Famer dropped a new single called “King Talk” featuring rising Ghanaian-American artist Blackway.
The KoKo-produced song was first teased in February when O’Neal shared an animated video celebrating LeBron James’ new record as the all-time leading scorer, dethroning Kareem Abdul-Jabaar. Following the viral video, O’Neal decided to roll out the song to streaming services to celebrate the NBA Playoffs.
“KoKo and I have been sending beats back and forth for a minute now and after he played me this one, I knew I had to jump on it. I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment for a collab with Blackway and this was it,” O’Neal said. “This is the type of record that gets me hyped like I’m walking out for game seven of the finals. The lyrics and vibe of this track was so perfect for the moment when LeBron James set the NBA scoring record and I knew I had to share it with the world—a king recognizes a king.
“It was crazy to see so many people connect with the song when they heard the teaser, just like I did when we created it.”
O’Neal, Blackway and KoKo had the collaboration in the pipeline for months and say they plan to release more music together soon.
In other music news, Brent Faiyaz announced his 2023 F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland world tour.
