Shaquille O’Neal is one of the biggest basketball stars in the world, but there’s another side to him: DJ Diesel. As Diesel, he’s been playing the DJ circuit around the world for a few years, and he’s just released his debut album, “Gorilla Warfare.”
His sound is best described as a mix of EDM, rock and hip-hop, and “Warfare” features 10 tracks with fellow DJ collaborators, including Jessica Audiffred, Crackdat aka Christian Smith, Hairitage, CELO, VRG & Blackway, Soltan, Kompany, TRXGGX, Rated R and Chassi & Kozmoz.
In a Zoom conversation with Variety, Diesel says, “These are some of my favorites, and I wanted to use my platform to showcase other people to the world and help these young kids out.”
Diesel says that while all of his collaborators were inspirational, Audiffred, who worked with him on “No Fear,” especially impressed him. “Everyone needs to be scared of her. She played for me and I told my crew we need to watch out for her. She goes hard,” he says.
Diesel worked closely with his friend and producer Brian Bayati to carefully curate the tracklist and in narrowing down which artists to spotlight. Diesel says, “Brian is the Larry Bird of the dubstep scene and I’m Magic Johnson, and we are the perfect pair. As I was coming up, we’d say, ‘He’s hot. She’s hot.’ And when it comes to the sport of EDM and dubstep music, we want to take it to the next level.”
The album title comes from the guerilla marketing campaign he used to market himself as a DJ. “I could pay a marketing firm $500 for this, but no.” He adds, “I didn’t want to roll the whole project. We wanted to hit people by surprise and change the way the world thinks of Diesel. I want to earn the respect from people.”
The EDM scene and DJing are not new to Diesel. He’s always had a passion for spinning tracks, going as far back as his college days where he would DJ. He says, “Brian and I are real DJs — from the crate era. I had to go and steal milk crates. I used all my money from cutting grass to buy records. I had SP-1200s sampling workstations and a Gemini mixer. I was a battle DJ.”
After retiring from the NBA in 2011, Diesel was looking for that thrill and rush again.
“I’ve been playing basketball since I was 13,” he says. “If it’s a crowd of 100 people or a crowd of 100,000, it’s the same thing if you’re putting on a show. In high school, the gym would be packed with 300 people. In the NBA and the championships, you have parades, but then it’s all gone, and you need it back. I went to Tomorrowland and saw Tiesto with 100,000 people out there. I got that feeling back. I thought, ‘I’ve been DJing since ’88, let me try.’ I was in the celebrity DJ box and had to prove myself.”
Diesel credits Perry Farrell of Lollapalooza for giving him a chance to perform in 2019. He says, “Mr. Perry gave me the opportunity. I didn’t have the slot that I wanted. But I guess when people found out I was DJing, they came out. We came out and saw 50,000 people. The place went crazy.” Earlier this month, he performed in front of his largest audience to date at Lollapalooza in front of more than 100,000 people. “That felt like a championship game and a parade all in one,” he says.
He has since played the Lost Lands, Tomorrowland, EDC LV, Electic Zoo, Forbidden Kingdom, Beyond Wonderland, and has a residency at Wynn in Vegas.
Now that he’s played festivals and clubs, he finds the experience as satisfying as stepping out on a basketball court. He says, “It gives me the feeling of a playoff game. People are ready to jam and have a good time. It’s our job as athletes and DJs to give them their money’s worth.”
Listen to “Gorilla Warfare” below.
