Shaq’s Bad Rap

Truthfully, when one considers the art of the rap diss and remembers some legendary signifying, say, between Tupac andBiggie, Jay-Z and Nas, and more recent I-am-the-best-you-can't-touch-me rap bragging (Ne-Yo and Chris Brown, for example), Shaq's recent attack on his rival and former Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant, was, well, pretty amateurish.

And yet, the fall-out over his recent performance at a New York nightclub, captured on YouTube for all to see, continues. Shaq unhurled a few choice words that have probably been simmering since his controversial Kobe fall-out and exit from the Lakers. He sent a shout out to his ex-teammate, "Kobe can't do without me," and instigated a little call and response chant: "Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes."

Instead of verbal whippings for the weak rap (sorry Shaq), the Big Man's being skewered for ego-tripping and speaking a bit too much truth. ESPN commentators actually put him on blast for so-called racialized comments that dissed poor Kobe—the same guy who helped facilitate Shaq's departure. It derailed a potential dynasty and forced me to suspend my long-time Lakers love.

Nevermind that Kobe actually hasn't come up with a ring since Shaq left for the Heat where he won ring No. 4 and recently went off to the Phoenix Suns. The gleeful debate and condemnation over Shaq's rap completely overlooks the nuances of hip-hop and rap-music culture.

Shaq's detractors seem to be most upset because he had the nerve to target Kobe in public, at a nightclub where he was hanging out when he decided to get on the mic for a freestyle performance. It might have seemed inappropriate to them, but Shaq's chosen platform is a space that has historically given freedom of expression to black and brown folk, particularly men, long before rap exploded on the global cultural scene. (But thanks to the Internet, whether you are a celebrity or not, there are now few "private" spaces where someone isn't taping and some off-color comments will end up broadcast around the world.)

That signature feature of rap-braggadocia (boasting) also reflects the egos of a generation of black athletes; Shaq, Allen Iverson and others raised on rap music whose unapologetic hip-hop swagger has disturbed the sensibility of the NBA's governing body.

The Big Man could have chosen to signify on ESPN or commentate during the NBA finals with a mic and a camera on any number of television and radio media outlets. Wouldn't he have fed that big ego with some spotlight even more gloriously than say a weak nightclub freestyle that probably lost him more points with rap's true-elite diss men?

Nevertheless, Shaq has been seemingly sentenced in the court of media opinion. ESPN quickly did a three-man, African-American weigh in, which included journalist Juan Williams. Shaq was taken to task for trying to make himself feel better by "playing the dozens" and dissing Kobe in light of his Phoenix Suns' wash-out in the play offs and then, like Imus, copping out on taking responsibility for his verbal blunder. The furor over Shaq's verbal attack strikingly highlights our continued cultural struggle to measure the limits of free speech and racialized verbal representation in different public spaces, where now almost anywhere is potentially public in a digitalized, YouTube age.

Shaq has also suffered perhaps the most shocking punishment of all: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-named "America's toughest sheriff," has stripped Shaq of his honorary deputy badges, one for work with a taskforce aimed against Internet violence for children. It seems that Shaq's "racist" and "foul" language has so disturbed the sensitivities of the sheriff that he feels duty bound to try to teach Shaq, in his words, a lesson, about decorum by stripping him of his "special deputy" status. (Of course, Arpaio, who practices creative prisoner "submission" techniques like dressing prisoners in pink underwear and working them on chain gangs, would not upon the closet scrutiny, I'm sure, be charged with the slightest hint of racially insensitive behavior, ego-tripping, or moral impropriety.) Don't despair, Shaq.

They were only honorary badges, but you've got real NBA rings.

On the one hand, it's as the sports commentators said throughout the playoffs and the finals: What a difference a year makes. The Boston Celtics are the NBA champs. Kobe's MVP and still a Laker, and Shaquille O'Neal is being branded as a politically incorrect loudmouth in the vein of Don Imus. On the other hand, the problem with analyzing racialized language and scary specter rap culture in the American mainstream mind continues as it did last year and the year before.

But hey, at least Shaq's still got that post-Lakers ring.

Stephane Dunn is a writer and author of (gulp) "Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films" (August 2008). She is also an assistant professor at Morehouse College.