Shaquille O’Neal once released a song calling out his biological father Joseph Toney for abandoning his family when O’Neal was just a child. As many NBA fans will be aware by now, Shaq went through quite a lot of struggles in his childhood. His mother struggled to raise him and his siblings alone.
Thankfully for Shaq, a man entered his life named Philip Harrison soon became his stepfather. This led to Shaq having a new father figure and authoritarian figure. Despite the fact that a void was left by his biological father. O’Neal had a somewhat normal childhood.
Nonetheless, the lyrics of a song created by him have indicated that the wounds in Shaq’s heart caused by his father abandoning him never fully healed. Let us take a closer look and find out more.
Shaquille O’Neal called out Joseph Toney for abandoning his family
As we all know, Shaquille O’Neal entered the NBA as the first pick in the 1992 NBA Draft. He was instantly viewed as a transcendental talent due to the sheer power and dominance that he displayed during his first few years in the league with the Orlando Magic.
In 1996, O’Neal tried his hand at music and produced a song called “Biological Didn’t Bother.” It appeared to be a tribute to his stepfather Philip Harrison. After all, Harrison raised Shaq and did everything a father would despite having no biological connection to him. However, the NBA legend also used the song to reveal how he felt about his true biological father Joseph Toney.
“You brought me into the world but you’re not my dad, sess around with those drugs makes my moms mad
So we left you with no remorsal pity, Took the first bus from Newark to Jersey City.”
As we can tell from the lyrics, Shaq was clearly using his own life story as inspiration for this song. After all, it is a well-known fact that Joseph Toney had a drug problem which forced Shaq and his mother to leave him and move on.
Although Toney was not a good father figure, one can only imagine how he felt after Shaq denied his designation as a father and gave the title to Philip Harrison. However, no one knows what O’Neal really went through and which father figure impacted his life more. The lyrics from this song reveal a fragment of the reality he faced.