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If It Takes a Thief was an autobiography of Coolio’s childhood days of hustling and drug addiction, Gangsta’s Paradise is more like a collection of parables for the ‘hood: instructions, dedications and a smattering of adventure stories tossed in purely for amusement. I want to make albums that people will listen to all the way through.”Ĭoolio has done that - twice. “What I don’t like about most rap these days is that it’s all about singles,” Coolio says. If anyone thought the mass appeal of Coolio’s first cross-over hit, the dreamlike “Fantastic Voyage,” was a fluke, his new album should allay all doubts. 1, selling nearly 2 million copies on the strength of Dangerous Minds and Coolio’s platinum-selling 1994 debut, It Takes a Thief. In July, “Gangsta’s Paradise” spent four weeks at No. Today, Coolio runs his own management company, Crowbar, and owns a hair salon in Long Beach, Calif., whose name sounds like his hair looks: Whoop-De-Doo. He recently appeared in 2Pac’s star-studded “Temptations” video as a zany bellhop opposite Ice-T’s lascivious hotel manager.
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He has survived the death of his mother from a stroke, and he nearly lost his own life to a nasty crack addiction, yet Coolio has managed to come out of it all with his clownish sense of humor intact. More than a decade after he cut his first independent single, “Whatcha Gonna Do,” the 32-year-old Coolio is in full control of his life and career. Finally he responds in a much softer tone: “But what’s romantic about that?” You know what I’m saying?” The two or three seconds of silence are deafening as Coolio tugs at one of the little fly-away braids shooting from his head like electronically charged shoelaces.
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“I just mean the classical overtones paint a picture of the emotional aspects you don’t get in little media bites. “I’m not saying that it glorifies the hood,” I say. Riding a silky smooth bass line and drenched in classical strings and choral music, the song finds Coolio rattling off a laundry list of button-pushing lines like “Got my 10 in my hand and a gleam in my eye.” Unlike songs by Dre and Snoop, though, the underlying message of “Gangsta’s Paradise” is that education is the best ticket out of the ghetto.įor the sake of civility, I backpedal. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound - into the Top 10.
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Romantic, after all, is a pretty loaded word and not exactly the image Coolio intended for his lyrics about growing up amid violence and chaos – particularly when the song’s refrain poses the very sober request “Tell me why are we too blind to see/That the ones we hurt are you and me.” And yet “Gangsta’s Paradise” taps the very same vein that has catapulted other Los Angeles rappers - Dr. We are talking about the theme song to this past summer’s Michelle Pfeiffer movie, Dangerous Minds, which is also the title track of Coolio’s brand-new album.
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Poised at the edge of his seat with both hands flat down on the coffee table in front of him, he stares quizzically into my eyes and says, “I’m trying to understand why you use that description.” WHAT DO YOU mean ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ is a romanticized view of the hood?” A perturbed Coolio has lunged forward on the white leather couch in the living room of his Los Angeles home.