From Remy Ma vs. Nicki Minaj to Jay Z vs. Kanye West, there have been a few memorable rap beefs in 2017. But has there been one better than Real Shaq vs. Big Shaq? We’d argue no, even though it’s quickly turned into one of the more confusing "beefs" we’ve ever encountered.
If you haven’t been keeping up, we’ll try and make this as simple as possible. Big Shaq is actually British comedian Michael Dapaah, who went viral back in early September when his "The Ting Goes" meme popped off following a trip to BBC Radio 1Xtra’s "Fire in the Booth" show. He’s also the mastermind behind "Mans Not Hot," a song that was inspired by his appearance on the show. It showed up on iTunes shortly after it took place.
A few weeks after the song dropped, the real Shaq got wind of it and decided that he didn’t like Big Shaq—who also goes by the names Roadman Shaq and MC Quakez—using his name. So he responded by teaming up with a Toronto rapper named ShaqIsDope (see where this gets confusing?!) to release a diss track aimed at Big Shaq. In it, he said that there is "only one Big Shaq" and proceeded to throw a few jabs in Big Shaq's direction. You can listen here.
It didn’t slow down Big Shaq’s momentum. Big Shaq turned right around and released a video for "Mans Not Hot" about 10 days after Shaq’s diss track hit—and it quickly racked up millions of YouTube views. It also turned just about every line in the song into a meme. You can watch the video here.
One day later, Big Shaq also responded to real Shaq by putting together a remix of "Mans Not Hot" for Bleacher Report. During a trip to New York City, he got into the booth and laid down a few bars aimed at the former NBA star.
And it looks like that got to Shaq. On Monday night, he took to social media to briefly address Big Shaq for a second time. He called him "fake Shaq" and told him to "#learnhowtorap."
As of now, no response from Big Shaq. But it’s safe to say he's going to continue to milk this for all it's worth.
And the best part about Shaq responding to Big Shaq again might just be that it’s not like Shaq is sitting around at home bored in retirement. Outside of handling his usual NBA on TNT duties this week, Shaq also served as a guest host on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday night, which required him to deliver a monologue, interview guests, and do all of the things Kimmel usually does. So he basically had to put all that on pause to issue a response to Big Shaq, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.
If you want to check out Shaq’s Kimmel monologue, which was actually pretty funny (Shaq coming up with about a dozen late-night TV nicknames for himself is gold), you can check it out below.
Stay tuned to see where this Shaq vs. Big Shaq thing goes next.
