Former NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal is giving Kanye West a taste of his own medicine after the Grammy Award-winning rapper returned to his Twitter platform and publicized Shaq’s business dealings.
It all happened after Ye came to the defense of basketball star Kyrie Irving Thursday night after Shaq referred to the Brooklyn Nets player as an “idiot” for sharing an anti-Semitic documentary on social media; a decision that cost the player an immense amount of backlash and a five game-minimum suspension.
“Shaq is in business with Jamie Salter,” Ye wrote in a post along with a photo of the retired ball player turned sports analyst. He continued, “Jaimie first said he’s 50/50 with David Beckham and 50/50 with Shaq I said ‘Jamie… There’s no such thing as 50/50 in business… Who has the extra 1 percent for the control and voting rights.’”
Elsewhere he added, “Jamie then said he’s actually got the 51 percent on both those deals. We as the creators and talent get so caught up in our vanity that we don’t read or understand the fine print. Like Dave Chapelle said, we need to stop giving up control over our own names and our likeness.”
Well, it wasn’t long before the four-time championship winner caught wind of Ye’s message, quickly warning the “Donda” rapper, “Believe me you don’t know me like that.” Shaq cautioned the Chicago native to “Worry about your business” before going on “to quote the once great Kanye West ‘I got more money than you, so why would I listen to you.’”
Shaq ended his response by telling Ye to “take my advice, get your family business in order,” and “have a great day brother.” The former athlete’s reply received over 115,000 likes and another 12,000 reposts.
If Shaq’s quotes seem familiar, it’s because Ye said something similar to television personality Piers Morgan during last month’s appearance on his show. The “Jesus Walks” emcee asked Morgan, “How much money are you worth?” to which Piers responded, “Not as much as you, sadly.” Ye fired back, “Exactly, so take my advice, maybe you’ll get richer…” before adding, “Why would I listen to you.”
Ye’s finances have been the topic of discussion as of late after the rapper saw the punishment for making anti-Semitic remarks come in the form of severed ties with major companies, including GAP, Vogue, JP Morgan, Balenciaga and most recently Adidas, which ended its deal with the fashion designer and immediately stopped payments to his Yeezy empire, ultimately resulting in West’s loss of his billionaire status.
In an impromptu press conference, he claimed, “This was the first year I managed to keep my account above $100 million. I got hit with 27 million dollars of taxes.” He added, “Then my payroll got cut by Adidas immediately, which was against the contract.” Ye also noted that he was only recently made aware of $40 million worth of bills that his team “had been hiding from me.”
