More than 1 billion streams on Spotify, just as many viewers on YouTube and more than five million copies of a single sold: Gangsta’s Paradise can rightly be called one of the greatest hip-hop songs in history. With the death of Coolio, the rapper who made the song in 1995, the artist and the song are trending again 27 years later.
By Lara ZevenbergThe music scene of the 1990s was heavily influenced by rappers such as 2Pac and Notorious BIG. The influences of Coolio and his colleagues can still be heard in music that comes out now. Coolio’s biggest hit has been influenced by a soul and R&B legend. Gangsta’s Paradise uses parts of the melody and lyrics of Stevie Wonders Pasttime Paradise from 1976.
Gangsta’s Paradise was written by Coolio, LV and producer Doug Rasheed for the film’s soundtrack Dangerous Minds. In the 1995 film, Michelle Pfeiffer plays a teacher who goes to work at a high school in a troubled California neighborhood. Coolio was looking for a song that would represent the struggles of children from a neighborhood where economic problems and racism play a major role and came across the demo by singer LV
Stevie Wonder didn’t immediately give the green light
“It’s like Gangsta’s Paradise there had to come. That it wanted to live, that it wanted to be born. And that I just had to get the message across,” Coolio later said about the writing process. He freestyled the first lines of the song, after which he finished the song in one session. Gangsta’s Paradise not without a struggle: Stevie Wonder still had to give approval.
The singer was not happy when he heard the first version. Wonder is not a fan of swearing and Coolio had quite a few swear words in that first version. “When Stevie Wonder heard it, he said there’s no chance I’ll have my song used in a gangster song,” Coolio said in an interview with Rolling Stone.
At the request of Stevie Wonder, the rapper rewrote the song. “He didn’t like some of the more obscene words I used. I used the N-word and in two places it said something like ‘fucked in the ass‘. If I didn’t change that, he wouldn’t put his signature. So I changed that. And once he heard the new version, he loved it.”
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Number 1 hit in fourteen countries
And Stevie Wonder wasn’t alone. Coolio scored a number 1 hit in fourteen countries, including the Netherlands. In Australia, the song was at number 1 on the charts for fourteen weeks, a record. It wasn’t until 22 years later that that record was broken by Ed Sheerans Shape of You.
The rapper was showered with awards. He won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo and an MTV Video Music Award for the clip accompanying the song. In 2019, Gangsta’s Paradise Named one of the top 20 songs of the 1990s by Billboard.
“You know what Gangsta’s Paradise has done, other than that it sold well? It gave me a place in the world. It gave me the guarantee that I could tour well into my sixties, if I wanted to. It’s been really good for me and it’s taken me to places that most rappers, no matter how big they get, will never go. You won’t be seeing Fetty Wap of Future in Pakistan or Uzbekistan anytime soon, are you?”
Coolio was born twenty years after the release of Gangsta’s Paradise still reminded daily of its success. “I still have people who approach me on the street and tell me that it has helped them through difficult times. That it has changed their lives. That is why I see the number as a gift. It has nothing to do with me, but with the person who is listening to it at the time. It has to do with all people, everywhere.”
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