The rain came early. A thin mist, hanging in the air like wet smoke. By mid-afternoon, the streets were wet and the cars drove slow. Men wore pants. Women wrapped themselves in coats. It was cold for late September in Atlanta. People on the street talked about it. "Can you believe this?" a woman said to a crossing guard. All he could do was shake his head. There were black umbrellas everywhere and Peachtree Street was crowded. It was Friday. People came and went.
"We're still on Peachtree?" asked Shaquille O'Neal, sitting in the back of a black limo bus. The driver muttered something that he could not hear. O'Neal turned to his cousin sitting across from him.
"Is this your first EDM festival?" O'Neal asked. "I've never seen anything like it in my life."
He glanced out at the road. The bus had only moved a few blocks.
"Where are we at?" he asked.
"We're right near the apartment, Shaquille," his girlfriend, Laticia, replied. "There's 14th Street right there."
They were traveling to Chattahoochee Hills, an 8,000-acre swath of farmland 30 miles southwest of Atlanta. It was the site of TomorrowWorld, a three-day electronic music festival—the American offshoot of the famed European circuit TomorrowLand—held the last weekend of September that every year boasts an attendance of nearly 200,000. Some of the most famous DJs in the world perform at the festival. On that night, Tiësto was headlining on the main stage at midnight.
But, on one of the smaller stages flanking the festival's center, Shaquille O'Neal was scheduled to perform at 8 PM under the moniker DJ Diesel. DJing has been O'Neal's passion since he was a teenager, and was a constant—albeit private—hobby throughout his time in the NBA. Even in the mid 1990s when O'Neal was more well known for rapping and acting, he would still come home and tinker with his turntables—alone, most of the time, or spinning for friends who were visiting. He keeps a video on his phone, from 1998, of him in his home studio in Los Angeles, during his tenure with the Lakers, DJing without a shirt on, spinning around and shaking his ass for the camera.
Now, in retirement, he has spent the last few years going more public with his DJing, playing on occasion in nightclubs, adopting a trap and hip-hop hybrid style, and starting Shaq Fu Radio, a live streaming app. All of this would culminate with his debut at TomorrowWorld. It was his first festival performance, in front of the largest crowd he had yet performed for.
O'Neal was introduced to TomorrowWorld last year by his girlfriend Laticia. O'Neal didn't know what to expect but he was awed by seeing the festival lights and by the sheer magnitude of the event. The congregation of people, the power of the DJ, the opportunity for showmanship and symbiocity with such a large crowd mirrored one of his favorite aspects of playing basketball. He didn't just see a fun event to attend, he saw a performance opportunity, a way to connect with people, a way to have fun in his middle age, and to have a new goal to work toward.
When Joe Silberzweig, marketing manager for TomorrowWorld, walked with O'Neal back to his car after his visit last year, O'Neal said to him, "I think I'm going to DJ this thing next year." Silberzweig thought he was joking. But O'Neal kept in touch. The festival asked to hear a sample mixtape, and were impressed with O'Neal's chops. "I was still very nervous about booking him," Silberzweig admitted. The festival was taking a big risk in putting him on the bill, and O'Neal was taking a big risk in accepting a set at such a prominent time. Despite a solid mixtape, there was no way to know that O'Neal could execute in a live setting.
