Oak Park native Luke Gawne reclines in a mansion in Los Angeles, under the glow of the Hollywood sign in a scene from his latest music video, and reflects on how far he has come in his life.
Rather, he raps it. With Shaquille O’Neal.
Yes, that Shaq, the legendary, ubiquitous NBA basketball player.
“I was blown away by Shaq’s passion for rap,” Gawne said. “And him making his return to rap with me is such an honor. He was so passionate and loves rap so much, in every single take he was rapping his heart out. It was such a magical experience.”
And, yes, return. O’Neal released four studio albums and more in the 1990s.
But this is Gawne’s story and the duo captured it in the song “Chaos” that will be released Friday.
“I was just an Oak Park kid with a dream and perseverance and hard work got me here,” he said. “Regardless of whether you like it or not, I hope you can appreciate that I am very passionate. I take this seriously and I give this [music] my all.”
Born and raised in Oak Park, Gawne first gravitated toward sports, a passion he shares with O’Neal. But in high school, Gawne saw a future in sports disappear after he suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him unable to participate in football and cross-country.
“I thought music would be the last thing I would ever do, I was pretty passionate about sports, but my health took a turn and I was pretty much incapacitated. Sports were no longer an option,” Gawne said. “In fact, I didn’t think anything was an option.”
After struggling through high school and graduating from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 2014, Gawne went on to Triton College and then University of Illinois-Champaign, where he left with a degree in accounting and marketing four years later.
He recalled his deep struggle with depression throughout those years, saying that was when he found a love for music and eventually put his own pain and anger onto a page first through poetry and then through lyrics.
“It was the lowest point in my life,” Gawne said. “I was a young kid. You go from healthy and able to do everything to not being able to walk around the block. I was writing about my confusion. It was a very confusing time and a very hopeless time.”
Through rap, Gawne said he was able to put his emotions into words. A lot of his material reflected the dark place he found himself in after his injury, he said.
His upcoming song “Chaos” captures that kind of daily struggle and how Gawne manages it.
“Somedays feel I gotsta quit/ When anxiety is something that I jostle with/The monster is/Inside a sarcophagus/In the pit of my stomach and esophagus/I YELL!/I LIVE ON THE EDGE I’M NOT SCARED OF THESE HEIGHTS”
Laying on the mic
But then Gawne took a chance.
“One day, I recorded something that I wrote on a $50 USB mic I had at home on GarageBand and I uploaded it to YouTube,” Gawne said. “Overnight, it did three to four thousand streams, and that blew my mind. Half of the comments were kids from my high school like ‘man, this kid is still alive?’ It was really well received which was shocking to me. That was the first time I was like, ‘well maybe there is something here.’”
After that, Gawne said he knew almost immediately he wanted to pursue a career in the rap industry, saying it was the only avenue he found that gave him “a lift” out of his depression.
Seeing it as the avenue to do something with his life, Gawne dedicated himself to his music, receiving his first record deal at 18.
But the celebration was short-lived as he soon found himself tied in a bad contract with no way out of it.
“Almost anyone who wants to sign you in music promises you the world,” Gawne said. “I was on cloud 9, I thought ‘this is it, this is my break, superstardom is next,’ then you start to learn about the reality [of it.] It is not that easy and everything comes at a cost.”
With the help of his mother, who early withdrew from her 401K, Gawne bought himself out of the “career-standing” contract. While it might have seemed like the end of the road to him at the moment, he came back with a vengeance.
Gawne released his song “Rise” in 2020 six months later and regained his momentum, saying he learned to not “take his foot off the pedal,” and was writing, recording and shooting music videos back-to-back for two years while he waited for his next big break. Seeing a linear growth in his career, he also began collaborating with other artists, such as Lil Xan.
But little did he know his biggest collaboration to date was yet to happen.
Enter Shaq.
In October of 2023, Gawne opened up his Instagram account and saw a direct message from O’Neal, who had a successful music career in the ’90s as a rapper and a DJ, asking to collaborate.
“At this time, I didn’t know who was running his account. I was a little skeptical,” Gawne said.
Gawne said O’Neal sent him a song sample to which he responded with a verse and after a few more back and forths, and a surprise FaceTime call from O’Neal, Gawne found himself on a flight to L.A. to work with one of the greatest basketball players of all time in his return to music.
“He called and said ‘should we do a video for it?” Gawne said. “I was like ‘Shaq, anytime, any place, anywhere, I will be there with my team, you name it.’ It still didn’t feel real until the actual video shoot where we linked up.”
The opportunity O’Neal gave Gawne was not lost on him, saying he and his team scrambled to put everything together in time for the video shoot, knowing that O’Neal’s time and guidance were extremely valuable. Seeing O’Neal face to face was an emotional moment for Gawne as he had been a lifetime fan of both O’Neal’s music and basketball career.
In “Chaos,” the two perform different perspectives, cultivating the experiences of someone who is “up and coming” and someone who has already made it, a perfect encapsulation of where the two artists find themselves today.
O’Neal said it all: “I walked fire already/It put the flame to me/Put me higher than anybody could aim to be.”
But O’Neal and Gawne are not only collaborators. They’re also friends. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Gawne said he is thankful for and one he is proud to have come out of this unexpected collaboration.
“Also, I want to shout from the mountain tops how good of a guy Shaquille O’Neal is, as well. As cool as making a song with him was, what I admire the most about him is his character and him as an individual.”
While there might be some more future collaborations between the rapper and O’Neal, Gawne is also hoping to continue to take his music to the next level, having his eyes set on winning a Grammy one day.
You wouldn’t know it by the melancholy at the beginning of the video. But wait until the end.
“Diesel and GAWNE/Yeah we ballin’/So call us G.O.A.T’s.”
Fade to echo.
“Chaos” will be released Friday, Dec. 8 on GAWNE’s YouTube page.
