“The thing that went on for me and him was just for fun.”
NBA Hall Famer Shaquille O’Neal holds no ill will towards Damian Lillard over their back-and-forth rap beef.
During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Shaq explained that it was all in good fun, and complimented Dame on his mic skills.
“The thing that went on for me and him was just for fun. I think he’s really, really good and he’s very talented. We had fun,” he said. “We all come from the same place. My thing is, if you say you’re better than me, I accept the challenge. If he says ‘I look better than you,’ then OK, I gotta hit the gym and work out; if he says ‘My shoes are whiter than yours,’ then I gotta go to the store and pick out a better pair. Other people take that stuff personally but I don’t. If you challenge me, I’ll step up to the challenge.”
The Shaq x Dame battles began when the Blazers’ All Star touched on The Diesel’s mic skills during his appearance on The Joe Budden Podcast.
“I think I rap better than Shaq,” Lillard said on The Joe Budden Podcast. “I’ve heard Shaq’s stuff. I’ve like…I think people was like…I think he was viewed as Shaq. People was like, this is] Shaq. It wasn’t like, Shaq and Biggie. People weren’t looking like this is] a real rapper. It was like, ‘That’s Shaq rapping.’ So, course, it was a big deal.”
The two then exchanged diss tracks, but there’s clearly no real animosity. As far as Shaq’s music career is concerned, it seems he’s content with his DJing gigs. Says Shaq:
“The funny thing is, rappers want to be NBA players and NBA players want to be rappers, but I was the first one. Want me to be honest? There’s not enough money in the rap game for me.”
He also told Rolling Stone that he has “like a hundred unreleased tracks” in the vault but they probably won’t ever be released.
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