One summer afternoon in the mid-1990s, the rapper Coolio – who passed away earlier this week – overheard the music that would change his life. On his way out of his manager Paul Stewart’s house in LA, he heard producer Doug Rasheed (then Stewart’s roommate) playing something he’d just mixed in the home studio. It was a sample of Stevie Wonder’s 1967 track “Pastime Paradise”, over which he’d thrown a few beats. The singer LV was also in the room, freestyling some verses when Coolio came in and enquired what the track was. His mind blown, he claimed it as his own.
Thus was born “Gangsta’s Paradise”, the track that single-handedly propelled Coolio to global stardom at a time when hip hop was still niche and within it, the rapper himself was on the cusp of breaking out. With its ominous, dark synth lines, sombre mood, and the somewhat conscious lyrics by Coolio and LV, talking about growing up in the ghetto without quite glorifying that life, “Gangsta’s Paradise” struck a chord far and wide.
Add to that a very smart decision by a Hollywood executive — using “Gangsta’s Paradise” on the soundtrack for the Michelle Pfieffer movie Dangerous Minds, including an unprecedented music video featuring Michelle and Coolio locked in a face-off — and America got one of its biggest pop cultural phenomena in 1995.
Scratch that: The world did. Here, on the other side of the planet, that music video played occasionally on the cool new Channel V (MTV would launch only in 1996), and the track found place in end-of-year compilation albums like Now That’s What I Call Music!, alongside Queen, Oasis, U2, Whigfield and Donna Summer. By the end of 1995, Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” had travelled – and in the pre-streaming era, to cross continents was a truly huge deal.
Not only did “Gangsta’s Paradise” spend weeks atop the Billboard charts (a first for hip hop), it also won Coolio, LV and Rasheed a Grammy the next year. With it, hip hop came into the mainstream like never before, and began its ascent to the dominating force in music – a trend that has continued well into the 21st century. For a rapper like Coolio, who rolled with West Coast rappers – a universe that also produced hip hop royalty such as N.W.A., Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and, later, Kendrick Lamar – at a time when Gangsta rap ruled the airwaves, this may have been his greatest legacy.
Coolio was born Artis Leon Ivey Jr., and grew up in Compton, California. A bright student in the initial years of his life, he got derailed when his parents divorced and fell in with gangster crews in and around Compton. Drugs, guns, violence – he saw and participated in it all. A turn to religion and voluntary firefighting helped him recover from addiction.
In 1987, at the age of 23, Coolio recorded his first single “Whatcha Gonna Do?”, and quickly made inroads in the LA hip hop scene. By 1991, Coolio had joined the hip hop group WC and the Maad Circle, who produced some popular singles like “Dress Code” and “West Up!” – but weren’t as influential or enduring as some of their contemporaries. By 1994, the group had somewhat disbanded and Coolio signed with the label Tommy Boy Records (who also repped Queen Latifah and De La Soul). In 1994, he put out his debut album, It Takes A Thief, whose lead single “Fantastic Voyage” became a club favourite and got Coolio noticed.
That is to say, Coolio was already something of a rising star at the time “Gangsta’s Paradise” came along. Around this time, G-Funk – a subgenre of gangsta rap where producers like Dr Dre were bringing in funk samples from the 1970s into tracks that bumped the gangster life – was growing popular and somewhat defining the sound of West Coast rap. “Gangsta’s Paradise”, with its Stevie Wonder sample, was obviously part of this tradition, but what Coolio and LV did with the lyrics set the track apart.
Coolio’s verses were about the gangster life – the drugs, guns, violence, the toxic masculinity that was a part of growing up in the ghetto – but where others found much to brag about, Coolio reckoned with the consequences. If you listen closely, “Gangsta’s Paradise” is actually about how the only way to get out of the ghetto life was through education.
Some critics say that with “Gangsta’s Paradise”, while hip hop overall began to rise, gangster rap itself lost its fervour. A recent BBC piece makes note. “America suddenly realised it could sell non-party rap to Brit pants-waists, and that's exactly what it's done ever since,” it quotes music journalist Garry Mulholland from his book This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk And Disco. “In many ways, ‘Gangsta's Paradise’ signalled the end of gangsta, or ‘reality’ rap as a cult. It lost the allure of the forbidden when your mum started singing along.”
With hip hop’s place in America’s popular music cemented, Coolio commanded a few hit albums and singles for the rest of the ’90s. Tracks like “1,2,3,4 (Sumpin’ New)” and “Too Hot” from his sophomore album Gangsta’s Paradise, and some more major movie soundtrack appearances, like “It’s All The Way Live (Now)” from Eddie, “Rollin’ With My Homies” in Clueless, and the Space Jam collab track “Hit ’Em High” – all of this meant Coolio and his gravity-defying dreads were everywhere in that golden era of hip hop.
As the new millennium arrived, so did a battery of new hip hop stars primed to take it to new heights. By 2001, Coolio was dropped from the label, and while he produced six more albums, the most rabid hip hop fans would find it difficult to name them. Coolio tried his hands at various businesses – in the 1990s, he owned a hair salon called Whoop-De-Doo.
In the last decade, Coolio was in the news only when he did reality shows, or when he had a beef with Weird Al Yankovic for creating a parody with “Amish Paradise”. Lately, he’d been currying favour with an entirely new kind of audience with his cooking vlog on YouTube, where he did a “lot of healthy fusion food - I do Black Italian - Blitalian, Black Asian - Blasian, Black English - Blenglish and I'm about to try Black Scottish - Blottish. I like traditional food and putting my own twist on it.” A lot of it appeared amusing to a new generation who did not live through the moment he peaked – or even if they did.
The artist may be gone, but the art endures. “Gangsta’s Paradise” has recently passed a billion streams on Spotify, according to Coolio’s official website. “You know what 'Gangsta’s Paradise' did, more than being one of the biggest sellers of that time? It solidified me in the rest of the world,” Coolio said to Rolling Stone in 2015, in a piece that recounts the making of “Gangsta’s Paradise” through interviews with everyone involved.
“It guaranteed that I could tour well into my 60s, if I wanted to,” he continued. “It’s been very good for me, very lucrative, and it’s gotten me to places that most rappers, no matter how big they get, they’ll never go to some of the places that I’ve been to. You’ll never see a Fetty Wap or a Future going to Pakistan or Uzbekistan, you know?”
Blunt and braggadocious, maybe – but let no one say Coolio spoke anything but his truth, the whole truth and nothing in between.
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