Big Shaq ain't Shaq (Shaquille O'Neal) by any stretch. But, by some accounts, Shaq suspects that Big Shaq is belittling him; insinuating that Shaq ain't 'hot' (that is, "cool") or big enough (that is, big) any more. What's more, he's scheming rather loudly to take Shaq's inalienable name -- even if the scheming 'alien' is the newly-arrived Big Shaq himself. Meanwhile, Big Shaq markets his brand as not hot at all -- as never hot, in fact; but rather, by some kind of super-providential twist(er), Shaq's ordained successor -- nay, 're-placer'. He's never hot. Whatever winter threads he wears, he can never be hot, he claims -- even sitting in the summer sun. He can never be hotter than the sun, which anyone can sit in! It's all so very confusing, even to Big Shaq -- and so, so fun. He, Big Shaq, has arrived -- but only to throw us all into a Black Hole which devours any enlightenment that veers too close to it.
Incidentally, Big Shaq -- born and raised in the UK to Ghanaian parents (his real name is Michael Dapaah) -- looks and, in some way, raps as if he's Kenya's very own Khaligraph Jones' twin (or double) -- or vice versa (view KJ's Nataka Iyo Doh). Perhaps the twain shall meet one of these days -- In Nairobi, or London.
Big Shaq has till now been better known, of course, as an irresistibly 'roguish', feather-ruffling comedian with an intimidating presence (when he wants to scare). He's become a rapper, certainly in his Man's Not Hot life, but maintains his "resistance" to all speculation. But he seems set to continue rapping in the 'after' of that particular life. The adulation he's obviously enjoyed with the release of the rap in 2017 is too tempting to walk away from. We'll be watching whatever space we can track him down to.
Man's Not Hot is unvarnished rap. But is it a song, let alone pop song, to qualify for inclusion and ranking among pop songs? Here's one answer: S/He who raps sings. Rap is a form of singing. It has become plainly so in the music industry, in our time. Rap is singing in undertones, so to speak, but not at the expense of the overtones associated with the typical song. Singing is sugarcoated talk. Rap is rapid-fire, sugarcoated talk: "Skrrahh! Pap, pap, ka-ka-ka!" Moreover, it is helpful that, nowadays, rapping almost invariably has instrumental accompaniment of one mix or another. Singing an sich doesn't have to be so accompanied, but pop songs do. Rap is pop, then. He (Big Shaq) raps, therefore he sings. The instrumental music that runs in the background throughout the song is distinctly refined in tone and commands respectful audience-attention. The rapping practically turns into a subliminal rhapsody!
All this despite the fact that Big ShaQ mixes the sugar with ample gutter diction, which I hadn't quite realized till I read and re-read the lyrics and saw their graphical representations. We can do without that; but perhaps I'm talking only for prudish, older folks. Big Shaq's spoken English is far from Chaucerian, but still has things I didn't grasp. Yet not grasping never stopped us across sub-Sahara from loving the many foreign and African songs that we listened to and loved in our youth. Songs have a certain inner-outer pull.
I think that the most magical and mind-blowing part of Man's Not Hot (at once a "raw and cooked" song), is when Big Shaq gets that bobbing and heaving and frenzied multitude of fans to respond to his "Skrrahh!" in one big-family chorus, and so unexpectedly,) with: "Pap, pap, ka-ka-ka!"
All that stream-of-consciousness chanting of mysterious and bewitching words (including supposedly African-origin monosyllables already distorted after just one incomplete generation) -- which would have greatly dismayed Kunta Kinte -- truly adds to the churn of sentiment and to existential charm, as well as to some sort of audience-awakening across the waters:
"Skrrahh!
Skidiki-pap-pap!
And a pu-pu-drrrr-boom!
Skya
Du-du-ku-ku-[tun-tun]-pun-pun!
Poom, poom".
Big Shaq brings the crowd face-to-face with creative possibilities hardly imagined till his sudden landing on the stage. In that sense he is truly one of a kind. Still, if you've read the commentaries, you'll know that his watchers and adorers already worry that, as a singer, with a persona which insists on deep winter-wear in the heat of summer, he's a shooting star -- an asteroid -- condemned to soon dis-appear from the glare of our telescopic but seasonal attention.
