He loved the idea. So we contacted Fu Schnickens, these three rappers from Brooklyn who had a great sound, and we recorded “What’s Up Doc.” Everyone was surprised how good it was.
Here are my favorite lines:
Forget Tony Danza, I’m the boss
When it comes to money, I’m like Dick Butkus
Now who’s the first pick me, word is born and
Not Christian Laettner not Alonzo Mourning
That’s okay, not being bragadocious
Supercalifrageltistic, Shaq is alidocious
Peace, I gotta go, I ain’t no joke
Now I slam it
Jam it, and make sure it’s broke.
Before we performed together on Arsenio’s show, Fu Schnickens came to the house and recorded the song. They wanted to write my verse for me, but I did it myself.
So we go on the Arsenio Hall Show and I’ve got this red outfit on that this girl at the mall made for me. It’s got glitter and the sleeves are cut off and I’m looking mighty fine. It’s a live audience. We’re doing this rap and you can tell everyone is really enjoying it. They thought I was going to make a fool of myself. They didn’t realize before I do anything I make sure I’m prepared.
Jive Records offered me a record deal the next day. I told them, “I don’t want to rap by myself. My concept is to rap with all my favorite artists.” So that’s what we did.
My first album, called Shaq Diesel, had Fu Schnickens, Phife Dawg from A Tribe Called Quest, and Erick Sermon. It went platinum, which means we sold a million records. I also did a song with Def Jef called “(I Know I Got) Skillz” that made it to number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100.
It was a lot of work, but I loved it. Now I’m a basketball star and a rapper and a movie star (more on that in a minute). My worlds are all mixed together, in some ways. In Shaq Diesel I had some fun taking swipes at Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony, and Shawn Kemp. It wasn’t anything personal. That’s what freelance rap is all about.
The first word I learned in the music business was recouping. When we did the first record they wanted to do everything for me—the mixes, the lyrics. We had to record in their studios. Before you get any money for your record, they have to “recoup” all the money for the studio. By the time everyone took their cut, I had a check for sixty thousand dollars left. My album went platinum, but all I got was chump change. I remember saying to Dennis, “Are you kidding me?”
I got smarter after that. I made sure I had control of my masters and my songs. When they said, “Come to this studio to tape,” I’d tell them, “I don’t want to pay you guys to use this studio. I’ll use my own.”
My next album, Shaq Fu: Da Return, came out in 1994. I got help from RZA and Method Man on that one.
The song that got the most attention was one called “Biological Didn’t Bother.”
I was in Chicago on business and I was walking down the street and some guy said to me, “Yo, man. That’s messed up. How come you don’t talk to your dad?” I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, so I called my mother because I figured Phil had gone and said something. I asked her, “What did Daddy do? Was he on TV?” She said, “No, it was the other one.”
She meant Joe Toney, the person who insisted he was my father even though I had not seen him since I was a little boy. He had gone on the Ricki Lake Show and complained that I wouldn’t have anything to do with him and all he wanted was for me to meet my half brother. I contacted the producers and got a copy of the tape and I watched it. I was really angry about it. My thing is, why is this man coming off like he knows me or cares about me? From zero to eighteen I had practically no contact with you. Now you want to tell me about your other kids? I didn’t want people to know about my biological father. It was part of my past I’d just as soon have forgetten and a very painful part of my mother’s past. I didn’t want to talk about it. And now this dude is bringing it up on national television.
My uncle Mike was with me on that trip, and on the plane back to Orlando I wrote a rap called “Biological Didn’t Bother.” The hook was, “You took me from a boy to a man.” It was my way of telling Sarge I appreciated his tough love. It started out this way:
Yo, Yo, I want to dedicate this song to Philip Arthur Harrison
Word up, ’cause he was the one who took me from a boy to a man
So as far as I’m concerned, he’s my father
’Cause my biological didn’t bother.
I don’t know what Joe Toney expects when he walks out on an eighteen-year-old girl and her newborn baby. He’s living in an old folks’ home now and he still tries to send messages to me but I can’t deal with that. I’m loyal. Phil Harrison made me who I am, for better or for worse. That’s it. It’s nothing personal. Philip Harrison is my father and my daddy. Period. Point-blank. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know where I’d be. So leave us alone, okay? Pretty simple, I think.
I loved making rap records and I made some money, but it was tip money compared to my basketball salary. It was a great experience, but I wasn’t going to make a living doing it.
People loved my first record and everything was cool, but sooner or later it was bound to happen. The industry hate started to kick in. Rappers started resenting my success. They were saying, “You’re a professional athlete, what are you doing in our world?” I could feel the tide turning.
When Shaq Diesel came out, everybody played it. But now I’ve got my second record and I’ve got to travel to all these radio stations and studios to promote it. They’ve got a million basketballs lined up for me and if I don’t sign them, they won’t play the record.
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.
There were two guys who weren’t like that. Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z couldn’t have been nicer. They did it for free. They told me, “Man, I love your work. You are a real rapper.”
Biggie Smalls was the nicest dude in the world. He was an absolute master in the studio. The other guys would come to the house to record and they’d be there all night. They’d go over it and over it and chop it and change it. I always had my verse prepared ahead of time, because I didn’t want to tie them up. I’d be working on my verses on the plane after a game. Dennis Scott, my best friend on the Orlando Magic, would help me with the beats.
When Biggie came, I went in and took about an hour to do my verse. He listened to it and said, “That’s tight. That’s tight.” Then he said, “Are you ready for me?” I handed him a pen and some paper and he said, “I don’t write, dawg.”
He went in my studio and came out fifteen minutes later with an amazing rap. The problem was, it was too vulgar. I told him, “Hey Biggie, we’ve got to think about the kids,” so he went back in and came out another fifteen minutes later with something even better.
Jay-Z was the same way. A total pro. He appeared on my album You Can’t Stop the Reign. That album was loaded with major stars, including Mobb Deep, DJ Quik, and Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls.
Biggie was amazed by all I had. By then I had moved into my sixty-four-thousand-square-foot dream house in Orlando, and he said, “I’m going to have all of this one day. I’m going to be the best.”
He would have been, too. He was young and talented and ambitious. Every time we saw each other, we gave each other love.
The last time I saw him was on March 8, 1997. We were celebrating my birthday, and I was in a cast. I was riding on Sunset Boulevard and there was a big traffic jam. Biggie could be kind of volatile, and he was having all these verbal altercations with people, so Uncle Jerome Crawford (he was my bodyguard) and I stopped and got out and said, “Biggie, what the hell are you doing?”
He smiled and said, “Stay cool, Shaq. I’m just getting a tattoo. I’m having a party later. Make sure you come, brother.” I told him, “Okay, we’re going to roll. See you later.” We bumped fists and I took off.
B
iggie was presenting at the Soul Train Music Awards and then going to the after-party at the Peterson Automotive Museum.
I had every intention of going to that party. I put on my white suit and my white hat. I was going to be a player that night. But I was damn tired, too. I sat down to watch some television and I fell asleep. I left my pager in the car, so when Dennis and Jerome tried to contact me, the pager was going off in my car while I was upstairs snoring.
My mom was the one who finally got hold of me. She woke me up at 4:00 a.m. and said, “Shaquille, did you go to the party?” I was half-asleep and I didn’t know what she was talking about, and then she said, “Your friend’s been shot. He’s dead.”
It took me a minute to process what she was saying. When I finally realized what happened, I closed my eyes and there Biggie was—sitting in the tattoo parlor making noise, smiling at me, banging fists with me, telling me, “See you later, bro.”
They never found his killer. With these rap wars, they never do. Biggie left the party and got in the front seat of the car, and some dude wearing a bow tie drove up alongside him and shot him four times. They said it was part of the East Coast versus West Coast rap feud that had been going on forever. Tupac Shakur, one of Biggie’s friends-turned-rivals, died the same way—in a drive-by shooting.
I don’t usually deal in what-ifs, but after Biggie died I spent a lot of time wondering how it would have been different if I had showed up at that party. If a seven-foot-one Shaquille O’Neal was standing by that car, would the guy still have pulled the trigger? Jerome is trained to make sure he protects me and those around me. I just feel if we were there, maybe something different would have happened. But maybe they were going to get Biggie no matter what. If it wasn’t that night, it probably would have been one or two or three nights later.
The rap world is violent. Lots of guys, before they got into the rap game, lived their lives on the edge. Gunplay and drugs are a part of everyday life in their world. You can’t hide from it. It’s part of them. When you bring groceries up the steps to your apartment, it’s there. When you visit your cousin, it’s there. When you go to play ball in the park, it’s there. I can understand it because I saw the same kind of scene every day in Newark, New Jersey. If you don’t break away from it, it will break you.
I really believe people had the wrong idea about Biggie. When he was doing his raps, his art, there was anger and bad language and violence. But a lot of that was an act. His life wasn’t perfect. He had some troubles, got mixed up with drugs. But when you met him he was just the sweetest guy, very polite, very humble.
I miss him.
By the time my fourth rap record came out, the critics were after me. They were saying, “If Shaq weren’t a superstar his rap albums wouldn’t sell.” Well that’s a brilliant observation. What’s your point, brother?
Once the politics of it kicked in, I realized there wasn’t enough money in it for me to bother. I didn’t need it. It was a dream and I got to live it. I had one platinum record, two gold records, and one wood record. Time to move on.
Of course people were killing me for doing all these things while I was playing basketball. What they didn’t understand was it never interfered with my workouts. I was also doing movies, and it was written into my contract that we couldn’t start shooting before noon or one o’clock. The morning was reserved for my workouts. Leonard arranged for me to play at a little gym in Manhattan Beach, and we’d go over there and run through drills and shoot. Leonard was a very good shooter. He understood what it took to keep sharp, to stay on top of your game.
That didn’t stop people from saying, “There’s no way he’s concentrating on basketball while he’s doing all this stuff.” They were entitled to their opinions, but I was trying to build something for the future. I was trying to establish my brand. There are certain opportunities you just can’t turn down. If Esquire wants you to be on the cover, you gotta do it.
If William Friedkin calls up and asks you to star in a movie, you do it. He was directing a basketball story with the actor Nick Nolte and he wanted me in it. The truth is, I had no idea who William Friedkin was. They told me he did great movies like The French Connection and The Exorcist, and I’m wondering, “Why does a guy like him want to do a basketball movie?”
He and Nick Nolte came by the house to talk to me about the movie. They said lots of athletes would be in it, but I would be the star. I told them I had never acted before, and they said they would get me a coach. That was important to me, because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself.
Actually, I was more than amazed someone would ask me to do a movie, since I had a stuttering problem my whole life. I still do. I’m just cool with it now. I know how to slow myself down and get the words out.
My father stutters, too. I don’t where he got it and I don’t know how I got it, either. It was a problem for me when I was little. Kids made fun of me. I was self-conscious about it.
I just kept quiet so people wouldn’t notice. In class the teacher would say, “Anyone want to read the first paragraph for us? Shaquille?” I would just smile and shake my head.
I’ll take the zero. I was too embarrassed to stammer in front of the other kids.
When I got to LSU, I met this gentleman named Tommy Karam. He’s still there. I called him the Senator. He was a very smart guy and he was one of my professors. He used to tell me, “You’re a special kid, Shaquille. If you ever need help with a speech class or with the media interviews, I’ll help you.”
One summer I met with him every day. He’d pretend he was from the media and he’d ask me all sorts of tough questions so I’d know what to expect. He was very patient with me. If I started stuttering, he sat there very calmly until I spit it out and then he’d wait and say, “Let’s try it again.”
He helped me a lot and I’ve never forgotten it. When I was delivering my lines on the set of Blue Chips, all the things he taught me came rushing back: slow down, take your time, relax.
My movies were not what you’d call award-winning. But doing Blue Chips was a blast. It’s where I met Penny Hardaway, and why I pressured the Orlando Magic to draft him instead of Chris Webber. Bill Friedkin was a very cool guy. He was a Celtics fan, and back when all the fans could own stock in the team he bought some. He was very excited to show me his stock certificates.
Friedkin told me, “Whatever you need. Just ask.” They put me up at the Beverly Hills Hilton, and it was nice enough but a little run-down. So when Bill asked me if everything was okay, I told him I wanted to change hotels. He put me up at the Four Seasons. That worked, because I had found out Arnold Schwarzenegger was there, and I wanted to meet the Terminator.
Bob Cousy was on the set and he was amazing. He plays an athletic director in the movie. In one scene he’s talking to Nick Nolte and he’s shooting free throws and he’s hit twenty in a row, and Nick Nolte says, “Do you ever miss?” and Couz deadpans, “No,” and then he hits another one. They did it in one take. He got a standing ovation. Now there’s a Hall of Famer for you.
Thankfully they only asked me to hit one free throw in the movie, not twenty-one. Hell, I didn’t have that kind of time.
The next movie I shot was called Kazaam. I played a genie who lives in a boom box and grants a little boy three wishes. The critics absolutely destroyed the movie, but every single person I met on the street told me they took their children to Kazaam and they absolutely loved it. I’d go through airports, and kids would run up to me and shout “Kazaam!” with the biggest ole smiles on their faces, and it made me laugh. Every time.
After I finished Kazaam I get a call from the legendary Quincy Jones, who wants to turn me into the first black superhero. So I did a movie called Steel. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone at the time, but I did all my own stunts, which included running through fire and jumping across a couple of buildings.
I’m not even twenty-five years old and I’m a basketball star, a rapper, a movie star, and an endorsement king. It happened so fa
st, sometimes I couldn’t believe it.
Ahmad Rashad has this show called Inside Stuff, so my first summer as a pro he asked me to come on. We’re at the Sports Club in Los Angeles, and Dennis Tracey is with me and Ahmad is playing me one-on-one and he’s barking at me, “Let me see your best. Let me see your best!” So I blow past him and dunked that thing so hard and the whole backboard shattered. It knocked me right on my ass. For a second, I wasn’t really sure what happened. I got up and I had some blood on my elbows. Dennis looked like he was going to pass out. He was petrified that his meal ticket had just shredded both of his arms! I waited a second and then I started smiling. It’s cool, dawg. I’m fine.
Pretty soon everyone is watching that dunk on the Internet.
They hadn’t seen nothing yet.
APRIL 23, 1993
The Meadowlands
Newark, New Jersey
Orlando shooting guard Anthony Bowie dribbled the ball down the left side of the floor, aware that Shaquille O’Neal was filling the lane on the weak side and advancing to the basket. As he released the pass to his rookie big man, he noted, “They’ve lost track of him. What a mistake.”
Shaq took one hard dribble to the hole past Nets forward Derrick Coleman, then rose up to dunk the ball. Seven-footer Dwayne Schintzius grabbed his arm as he rose up to slam it through, requiring O’Neal to drag New Jersey’s big man along for the ride.
Shaq hung on the rim for a split second before he realized what was happening. The entire backboard was collapsing and the shot clock was about to drop on his head. He ducked as the shot clock grazed his shoulder, and the rim broke free from the stanchion and crashed in a heap.
Orlando president Pat Williams, watching from home, winced as his prize player narrowly missed serious injury. “He’s lucky he wasn’t killed,” Williams said.
Across the country in Los Angeles, Leonard Armato, Shaq’s agent and marketing guru, couldn’t contain his glee. “This is perfect!” he exalted.
Shaq Uncut: My Story Page 9