Many NBA players over the years have had dreams of being rappers. Some names that come to mind are Allen Iverson, Ron Artest (Metta World Peace), Damian Lillard, and Iman Shumpert. Yet, there is one who is currently in the NBA Hall of Fame, AND he has a certified platinum album and was christened “greatest NBA rapper of all time” by one of the most respected hip-hop artists in the game.
Snoop gave Shaquille O’Neal that title in an Instagram post with a clip of a video released last week on Sept. 1. Snoop Dogg
made that proclamation after the release of a video by a rap duo named Coyote. The song “3 Locos” featured Shaq, one of the NBA’s greatest players.forwp-incontent-ad2">The two emcees who make up Coyote, Ladies Love Guapo and Ricky Blanco, spoke to TMZ Sports to explain how the collaboration with Shaq Diesel happened. Shaq Diesel is the name Shaq uses for his music endeavors.
Shaq started to follow them on social media after Ricky Blanco dropped a freestyle verse on the rapper’s Instagram account. The former basketball player left comments on the page, and that started an online relationship that led to Shaq being featured on the “3 Locos” track.
After discussing a possible feature, Guapo said that Shaq was interested but only if the track was “some hardcore stuff.”
“He was like, as long as it’s some hardcore stuff, I’m down. So we made a hardcore hip-hop ’90s-type song, and we’re like, ‘Bro, let’s send it to Shaq,’ and he got on it, did his thing, he spit like 32 bars. He went off!” Guapo said.
Shaq liked the track, and a collaboration was done four hours later.
The group said, “4 hours later he FaceTimes us and he shows us his verse and he went crazy! He’s rapping better than 90% of rappers out there.”
The full video (WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE)
Blanco also told the media outlet that this isn’t the only song done with Shaq. There is an additional song with the TNT announcer, and Shaq has also produced a track for the duo.
Does this mean we’ll see Shaq making another album in the future? Time will tell.