What’s that saying? The best things happen when you least expect them to? When you don’t see them coming? In Myles O’Neal’s case, the best things happen when the sun goes down. The 28-year-old DJ is the son of NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal, but may be better described in his scene as the son of DJ Diesel, his father’s dubstep pseudonym. Myles is walking the streets of New York when he hops on our call and his infectious energy translates immediately, despite him having come off two major US festivals the weekend before. He walks me through the chaos of the prior weekend: “It was Breakaway…then I did the afterparty with Wes [or, as the fans know him, Diplo] then we went to EDC the next day.” In O’Neal’s world, party is the name of the game.

But massive Vegas stages weren’t always in the plans. What started as a hobby snowballed into something much, much bigger: “I didn’t think it was going to lead to all this, but it just happened very quickly,” O’Neal tells me. He got his start in LA, playing locally at his friends’ clubs in Santa Monica, and suddenly the bookings came flooding in. He continues, “It just leveled up from there…I wasn’t really prepared for it.” However, O’Neal certainly wasn’t a stranger, “I got into the space because of my dad, when he went on to do DJ Diesel, he forced me to go on tour with him.” We laugh. He reiterates—“Yes, forced. I would like that to be included.”

O’Neal wasn’t sold right away when it came to his experience on tour with DJ Diesel. Though the intrigue was certainly there, dubstep wasn’t for him—he finds the genre “really aggressive.” But his father encouraged him to find the music that he really loved. “The lane that I liked the most was tech-house music,” he says. This avenue led him to artists like zillennial phenom Fisher, from whom he takes sonic inspiration (and with whom he’s now performed at none other than the kingmaker music festival: Coachella).

Myles O’Neal’s career is reaching daybreak, with two major plays taking place concurrently: the release of his most recent single, “Make You Wait,” with FETISH and his move to Miami. Both arrive after years of careful planning: O’Neal made listeners wait two years to hear the recent single—the track was the product of a cold DM. After reaching out to FETISH in hopes of collaborating they were in the studio only a week later. “Working with Justin [FETISH] is very easy…he’s one of the first people I collaborated with,” O’Neal adds. 

As for the Miami move, it’s been a long time coming: O’Neal moved to Miami specifically for its music scene. “I feel like we did a lot of mainstream stuff, like being at the Wynn [his residency in Las Vegas this year].” He continues, “I want to tap into more of an underground audience. I feel like when I go to Miami shows, I’m really serious about it. I had to make the move.” When O’Neal blends funk and R&B into the sets he plays in cities like Las Vegas, he explains, audiences struggle with the unpredictability of the sound. Moving to Miami has given him the chance to explore his full musical capacity, and it doesn’t hurt that there’s no shortage of marathon parties.

In addition to his solo ventures, O’Neal has joined musical forces with DJ Diesel—this time, entirely voluntarily—for hard-techno father-son duo O’Neal Boyz. He recalls their first set together at Tomorrowland Belgium, where they took over the Rave Cave. DJ Max Styler came up with the hard techno idea, but O’Neal wasn’t convinced that his father would do it. “He never wanted to learn how to do it until we got to the stage of Tomorrowland and he did it live,” O’Neal recounts. “I showed him how to do it while we were playing live.” Despite his doubts, he describes the set as “insane” and how the energy carried over into their next set in LA, O’Neal influencing O’Neal, each pushing the other to explore his sound.

As the summer begins, it’ll be hard to catch Myles O’Neal in one place. He’s returning to his new home, Miami, but not for long—he is soon to jet off to Europe for a round of summer sets. Despite his globetrotting past, and imminent globetrotting future, DJ Myles O’Neal isn’t in it simply for the love of the lifestyle; or even just for the love of the music. At the end of the night, when the music turns off and the sun starts to rise, O’Neal’s heart lies in the scene itself. For O’Neal, it’s all about giving back the same energy to the crowds that the crowds give to you. “The scene is very much about getting what you put in,” he tells me. “If you come in with bad intentions, you’re going to get bit in the ass.”

Photographed by: Daniel Zuliani

Styled by: Maria Lara

Written by Kayla Hardy

Grooming: Tina Echeverri at Artist Management.