About

Shaq Sings is an image macro series featuring a screen captured image of retired professional basketball player Shaquille O'Neal singing, which is typically accompanied by lyrics of popular hip hop, reggae and R&B songs.

Origin

On February 9th, 2017, Twitter user @_kbelijr^[2] posted a screen captured image of O'Neal singing along with lyrics from the 2001 R&B song "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys (shown below). Within one week, the tweet garnered upwards of 43,000 likes and 36,000 retweets.

Precursor: Spongebob Sings

On September 30th, 2015, Twitter user @foxygrandpa62^[5] posted a screencapture of Spongebob Squarepants singing with the caption "the best time to wear a striped sweater… is all the time" (shown below). Within two years, the tweet gained over 2,300 likes and 1,900 retweets.

Spread

On February 12th, BuzzFeed^[3] highlighted several Shaq Sings image macros. That evening, Twitter user @NathanZed^[4] posted the O'Neal picture along with lyrics from the 2016 pop song "That's What I Like" by Bruno Mars (shown below).

On February 15th, Redditor McBeastly3358 posted the the O'Neal image with the caption "Out in di streets, dem call it murrrderrr," a lyric from the 2005 reggae song "Welcome to Jamrock" by Damian Marley (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post received more than 4,400 votes (95% upvoted) and 100 comments on /r/BlackPeopleTwitter.^[1]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References