60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Coolio—“Gangsta’s Paradise”

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

Rob explores Los Angeles rapper Coolio’s megahit “Gangsta’s Paradise” by discussing the distance between the stark realities behind much of hip-hop’s lyrical content and rap songs’ public reception as pop music. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Christopher R. Weingarten Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first rap song I ever loved was Wild Thing by Tone Loke. Deal with it. This is 1989. Tone Loke is 23 years old, born and raised in Compton, Los Angeles, a single father also caring for his sick mother. Loak is a gang name, it's a Crip name, but Tone Loke wants to be a rapper, an entertainer, a unifier, a pop star, A man of the people, all of them.

He wants to make people laugh. He wants to make people dance. He'd like to teach the world to do the wild thing. And now he's got the number one album in America. Loaked After Dark, released in January 89, iconic album cover. Loaked After Dark, homage to Donald Bird, the jazz trumpeter. 1964 is A New Perspective, famous Blue Note Records album cover he's posing with a sports car, the Jaguar E-type.

I owned Loaked After Dark on Cassette. I loved it. Donald Bird reference went way over my head. But then again, back then, what didn't? She said, hey, you too. I was once like you and I liked to do the Wild Night. First time I heard Wild Thing, I was 10 years old watching MTV on the television over the bar of a Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri. Casa Gallardo, the taco meat was a little spicy, transfixed by the Wild Thing video.

Delighted. guitar if, of course, is an Eddie Van Halen sample, Jamie's Crying, over my head. Initially, it was over toneloak's head also, his producer, Matt Dyke hooked up the Van Halen sample. In the video, toneloak is wearing a delicious vinyl t-shirt. That's his label, co-founded by Matt Dyke, actually. Wearing your own record labels t-shirt in your video is acceptable if you're tone loke. Delicious vinyl became a famous LA rap label. In 92, they put out the first far side record over my head. The Wild Thing video, of course, it's black and white, and tone. Locke is the backing band of bored-looking models.

It's a parody of Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love video. Possibly that wasn't over my head. Maybe I got that one. Nonetheless, the emotional, the physical, the purely logistical intricacies of the quote-unquote wild thing way over my head. All I knew is this guy made me laugh. Made me want to dance.

really dance, of course. Too self-conscious, but tone loke made me want to. As a compromise, when Wild Thing came on at the roller rink on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, I would skate in circles, roller skating quite slowly, clinging to the side rails, but still transfixed, still delighted. Roller skating poorly to Wild Thing is maybe as carefree as I've ever been in my life. Wild Thing was the first rap single ever certified platinum, a million single sold. 2.5 million, actually, biggest single in any genre since we are the world back in 85. This song is a big part of how rap becomes pop. But Wild Thing stalled out at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart,

beat out by Paula Abdul's straight up. It was a whole fiasco, delicious vinyl, we're pissed justifiably. This is what a Billboard chart methodology controversy looked like back in 89. Wild Thing didn't have enough radio play, see? In the Midwest especially. See, friggin St. Louis. Radio's cold reception to Wild Thing was possibly due to rap music bias, or possibly due to immoral objections.

I need $50 to make you holler. I get paid to do the Wild Thing. Name a more iconic description of capitalism than, I need $50 to make you holler. A specter is haunting Los Angeles. the specter of chart-topping, fun-loving rappers who just want you to laugh and dance and so forth. You know what else they'd like you to do, actually? She's dressed in a yellow. She says hello.

Come sit next to me, you farm fellow. You run over there without a second to lose. And what comes next? Hey, Bust a Move. The second rap song I ever loved was Bustamoo by Young MC. Deal with it. This is spring 1989. Young MC is 22 years old, born in London.

moved to Queens, New York as a kid, went to USC, got an economics degree, wrote the lyrics to Tone Lokes, Wild Thing. Sure, delicious vinyl put out Young MC's debut album, Stone Cold Rhyman in the fall of 89. Bust a Move was certified platinum as well. Made you laugh, made you want to dance. My one legitimate dance move. My signature wedding dance move takes place only during the drum break to Bust a Move, the Dennis Coffee sample. What you do is you find two little kids, of slightly different heights dancing close together and then you dance over to them and then you play air bongos over their heads to the bust-a-move drum break you got to know the kids or the parents a little bit to do this safely this is a very specialized dance move a haley's comet aspect but when the stars align i assure you it is quite amusing kids love me the third rap song i ever loved you guessed it You can't touch this. You can't touch this by MC Hammer. Born and raised in Oakland, California. He's a little older at this point, 28. He'd been a bat boy for the Oakland A's. He'd put out a couple albums already.

He's got, you know, the pants. He makes you want to watch him dance. I also owned on cassette, his third album, Please Hammer Don't hurt him. Released in February 1990 in the first rap album to go diamond. 10 million copies sold. In America, he bought, among other things, gold-plated gates for his mansion emblazoned with the slogan,

Hammer Time. Proper. What you say, Hammer? Proper. Rap is not pop. If you call it that, then stop. Q-Tip said that. Q-tip from a tribe called Quest back in Queens. God bless a tribe called Quest, but rap is definitely pop now. And the specter of chart-topping, fun-loving rappers, who just want you to laugh and dance is now haunting the Bay Area as well. Pretty much it's haunting the whole country. Sheesh, my name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s. Today we're talking about

Kuio's Gangsters Paradise. I promise. This is my 37th episode and officially my longest wind-up. It's called establishing a lineage. I should clarify, for example, that despite blowing up in 1989, Tone Loke and Young MC have since been claimed

culturally by the 90s, decade creep, I suppose. Or anyway, both these guys are veterans of the I Love the 90s concert. tour, which launched in 2016, and will resume in August 2021 with a revolving lineup, also including the likes of Rob Bass, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Kid and Play, Noddy by Nature, and Tag Team, and therefore implicitly seeks to define 90s music as char-topping, fun-loving rappers who just want you to laugh and dance. As is the case with your 2021 headliner Vanilla Ice, who in 1990

released what is, if I'm honest with you, and I try to be, the fourth rap song I ever loved, Ice Ice Baby. Police on the sea, you know what I mean? They pass me up, can run it all the don't mean. Did they now? A Spector is haunting, chart-topping, fun-loving rap music, the Specter of a white guy from Dallas. Just in case I don't make it back here, I need to tell you that I also own the Blockbuster 1990 Vanilla Ice album to the Extreme on cassette.

And whenever anybody within a 50-mile radius even says the words, To the Extreme out loud, I am obligated to bust through the wall like the Kool-Aid man and remind you that the last song on To the Extreme is a beatboxing showcase called Have an Errone. Thank you for your indulgence. Is chart-topping fun-loving rap music real rap music? in the Q-tip sense, how embarrassed should I be to tell you

that Sir Mixalot's Baby Got Back was the eighth or ninth rap song I ever loved. Baby Got Back was the second biggest hit of 1992 after End of the Road by Boys to Men. Sir Mixelot was born and raised in the suburbs of Seattle. His songs one-times got no case should be taught in law school. Is a rap song less credible if it crosses over to the pop charts? Or more to the point,

if it crosses over to all the white kids at the roller rink in St. Louis, Do you take a hit rap song less seriously if it makes you want to dance? If it's funny, if even the white kids are dancing, if the white kids are laughing. Who gets to laugh? And at what? At whom? This conflict did not originate with Cullio, but few chart-topping, fun-loving rappers of the 90s did a better job of unifying America. And pretty much nobody found that experience more alienating.

Cooleo is born artist Leon I.B. Jr. in 166. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, raised mostly by a single mother. He had asthma. He was a bookworm. He skipped the sixth grade. He had some youthful association with the Crips. He turned to theft to burglary in his adolescence. And he turned 18 while in jail for attempting to cash a money order associated with an armed robbery. In his early 20s, he struggled with crack addiction. He got clean in part by moving up north to San Jose for a spell. to live with his father and work as a firefighter for the California Department of Forestry. As he later told Spin Magazine with regards to crack, I didn't quit through firefighting. I quit through God.

It happened through willpower. It was time for me to stop. God had plans for me, and so he made me stop. He started rapping seriously in the late 80s. He hadn't settled on a rapper name yet until one day he's fucking around playing a little guitar or something. And one of his friends says, who do you think you are? Cullio Iglesias, ergo. Cooleo first broke out as a legit recording artist on 1991's Ain't a Damn Thing Changed,

the debut album from the LA group, WC and the Mad Circle. That's Mad spelled M-A-A-A-D for you Kendrick Lamar fans. WC was the leader and fellow rapper. Producers included Crazy Tunes and Dr. Dre's cousin Sir Jinks, who'd already worked a ton with Ice Cube. Maybe it's hindsight that makes me say Culeo already sounds like a star. on a song like Ain't a Damn Thing changed, but Coalio already sounds like a star.

Ain't a damn thing changed. Suck a hawk could you figure. Coolio and crazy tunes will ever sell out, nigger, sweating khakis and t-shirts, beanies and starter caps and laying funky raps on a dope track. More importantly, Kulio is in his late 20s by this point and has already lived several lifetimes,

and he can describe those lives to you with, let's say, a youthful ferocity and vivacity. But he is also already grappling with the question of how to sell himself, without selling himself out. In 191, dance all up for a couple of dollars. I sell away my soda with a rope with my collar.

I'll be taken from the list of the lost and missing. Rapping down a dark road on my way to prison. In 1991, pre-started, Kulio already has a grim awareness of how rap music is sold, how the rappers themselves are sold, to those rat fans not born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. He is aware of the national cultural biases.

he is expected by those eager outsiders to confirm. A house that I don't own and no respect on the street. Kulio gets that the rap is not pop debate is in part about perception versus reality. their perception versus your reality. By their perception, I mean the slack-jawed kids watching MTV. Kulio understands the assignments. Kulio understands the pitfalls, the stereotypes inherent to the assignment. His charisma, his buoyancy, his light-hearted aura, his copious star power. All of this will work both for and against him as he becomes a star himself, which he does in 1994 with the release of his debut solo album, It Takes a Thief, which kicks off with an ecstatic and unifying little tune

called Fantastic Voyage. Maybe it doesn't. Fantastic Voyage, which peaked at number three on the Hot 100, does not so much sample the Dayton, Ohio funk band Lakeside's 1980 hit Fantastic Voyage as commandeer it, buoyantly. But the video for Cooleo's Fantastic Voyage is where Cooleo truly shows you where he's at, the charisma, the whimsy, the mysterious gentleman with a cane and the pink suit who transforms a bicycle into a Chevy Impala convertible, which Cullio then drives, cue the on-screen treasure map from De Hood to De Beach, and then there's hundreds of partygoers emerging from the trunk of

the Impala. And there is also the matter of Cullio's hair, the spidery braids. Quite a striking look. This is quite a striking human being. And musically, his lane appears to be escapism, even if there's quite a chasm, physical and metaphysical, between what many of his newly minted MTV-bred fans might be escaping and what Culeo himself is escaping. I'm trying to find a place where I can live my life and maybe eat some steak with my beans and rice a place where my kids can play outside without living in fear of a drop-off. But y'all don't want to hear him. You just want to dance.

The first single Off It Takes a Thief was actually County Line in which Cullio applied. in person for government assistance and distracts himself from his embarrassment by painting a vivid picture of everything and everyone around him. He's referring to the W.C. in the Mad Circle record, which sold 150,000 copies or so. After it takes a thief comes out, Kuyo's government assistant's days. are over. So while you still can, you better savor the experience of Cullio, not savoring this experience at all. There's just such a goofy swagger to this guy. He's playful, he's funny, he's self-deprecating, but also his storytelling gets sharper as the mood gets darker. One of my favorite songs on this

record is the title track. It Takes a Thief in which Cullio returns to his burglary days. There's this sumptuous, dusky G-funk ominousness to it. And this might be just another transgressive crime fiction, Fantastic Voyage for you. But that's not quite what this song means to him. 38 special I don't want to have to shoot. Kulio is not a rap-ty-rap type rapper. this is not a bars situation,

but there's an economy of phrase. It gets to you. It sticks with you. It brightens the comedy. It heightens the drama. When I need my mail, my snaps, my dollars, my ends,

my group ain't high enough, so I'm robbing all my friends. Somebody out there's out there's out there getting me. The small other nigger, the bigger they get beat. It takes a thief. The album debuted and peaked at number eight on the Billboard album chart.

So a hit. Was it a pop? pop hit though in 1995 in a rolling stone profile coolio talked about how after fantastic voyage blew up he worried that he'd alienated his core audience so for the albums next and last single he picked the much grittier and funkier mom mom in love with a gangster a duet with the rapper LaShawn who you remember perhaps from LL Cool J's doing it in which Cooleo plays a guy in prison and she plays his possibly unfaithful girlfriend on the outside it's a

gritty lovers quarrel. It's played for laughs, but he also slaps you in the face super hard in the first 30 seconds. There's an MTV video for this song too, though notably it changes that line from don't tell him that I'm doomed, keep lying and tell him I'll be home soon to don't tell him that I'm doing time and tell him I'll be home soon. And just that frivolous change, just the idea that this song's clean version had to avoid the word doomed in relation to prison. This says a lot to me about when and how rap gets to be pop. For his part in Rolling Stone, talking about Fantastic Voyage, Cullio said, I don't think you can classify rap as pop. The only time people classify rap as pop is when they start playing it on white stations. Relatedly, in the summer of

In 1995, a Culeo song played a crucial part in a major motion picture with, let's say, some awkward dynamics in terms of race relations. And that movie, of course, was Clueless. Amy Heckerling's Deified Romcom. I love Clueless. Everyone loves Clueless in large part for its super endearing awkwardness. As when the quirky new girl, Ty, that's Britney Murphy, is at the house party and she gets clocked in the head with a shoe and then balks her head on a kitchen lamp and then share.

That's Alicia Silverstone, contrives for Ty to console herself with the hunky Elton. That's Jeremy Sisto, at which point Ty and Elton Bond over a Coelio song called Rolling with my homies. It's a month you got there. Yeah. You ready to go back out there? Yeah. All right. Sherry, can you do this?

Rolling with the homie. Yeah, let's do it. You ready. Let's not belabor this. Two attractive white people singing along. to a song called Rowland with my homies. It's like a 1.5 on the racial awkwardness, Rector scale. But yeah, also in summer 1995, less than a month later, in fact, in August,

Michelle Pfeiffer stars as a former Marine turned inner city high school English teacher and the gritty melodrama, Dangerous Minds. Don't get involved. Let's not belabor this either. Do you need me to tell you that the white savior premise of dangerous minds, minds as a wee bit ill-advised. You don't. This isn't a hot take situation. This isn't a once-beloved film aging poorly.

Beavis and Butthead had dangerous minds pretty much figured out back in 95. Oh, yeah. This is from that movie where, like, you know, that white chick goes into the hood and teaches everybody how to get good grades. Oh, yeah. They always have movies like that. There's this teacher, and there's, like, all good. everybody like stops being a gangster and then they get good grades and go to college.

Yeah. And then it's like, you know, she like makes a difference or something. Yeah. Yeah, that's really stupid. Yeah. Never once doing this show have I regretted seeking the council of Beavis and Butthead. Uh, Michelle Pfeiffer entices their students by teaching them Bob Dylan lyrics. Bob Dylan and then Dylan Thomas.

Yeah, don't get involved. But yes, holy shit, here it is. As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize that's nuts left. Bars. Me saying bars is a 2.5. Cullio's Gangst's Paradise is one of the most striking opening lines of the decade. In rap, in pop.

And partially that's down to the almost shocking Tupac caliber intensity of his voice. The genuine despair, the volcanic preachers, grandiosity. This is Culeo reveling and all his charisma and ferocity and even swagger, but he's not laughing. He's not trying to make you laugh. This resulted in quite a bit of awkwardness.

So, Gangsters Paradise is produced by Doug Rashid, who worked with Tupac, Whitney Houston, L.L. Cooljee, and his wife, Shaka Khan. Gangstis Paradise, of course, commandeers, Stevie Wonder's Pastime Paradise. From Stevie's 1976

double album Songs in the of life. I am disinclined to say anything glib or fake insightful about songs in the key of life. It's one of the single greatest pieces of art ever produced by America. How's that? You don't talk about songs in the key of life. It's not a topic for discourse. Past Time Paradise, in fact, is about misguided people reveling in a fraudulently idyllic past or misguided people fixating on a fraudulately idyllic future or both. Not a great theme song for for this show necessarily. Stevie agreed to clear this sample if Kulio took out the curse words in Gangstas Paradise,

which of course Kulio did. Also, Stevie asked for 95% of the publishing. The modified hook of Gangstis Paradise is of course sung by L.V. an L.A. native equally immersed in West Coast gangster rap and gospel, and he sings the hell out of this song. And in a Rolling Stone oral history of this song back in 2015, Elvie talked about how he personally sang every part of the backing choir in this song. L.V. is the whole choir, which had never occurred to me as even possible. Culeo will gladly tell and retell the story on the radio, four oral histories, over a plate of Hot Wings, whatever, about the day he stopped by his manager, his house in LA to pick up a check and there was a little studio in there and coolio gets the check and leaves

the house and there's a Chevy biscane for sale in the driveway of the house next door and he stops to talk to the neighbor for a little bit about maybe buying the biscane and then coolio's got to go to the bathroom so he goes back in the house uses the bathroom walks by the studio and dug rishit is in there fudcing with the beat to gangstice paradise and coolio says that's mine and then freestyles immediately as i walk through the valley through the shadow of death etc cullio calls it divine intervention. He says that the song wrote him. This is certainly a the song wrote me sized song from a commercial standpoint. Kuyo once said, I was thinking to myself, man, with what's going on in the video and what I'm saying, there's no way white people are going to get into this song. No way,

but I was wrong. Three weeks at number one on the Hot 100. Nine weeks at number two, which is bizarre, and implies tone loke, wild thing type chart methodology, hijinks. Sometimes Michael Jackson's You Are Not Alone was number one. Sometimes it was Mariah Carey's fantasy. Gangst's Paradise as a single went triple platinum, three million copies sold, and it was, in fact, the best-selling single, the biggest song of 1995 overall.

The first time the best-selling single of the year was a rap song. Rap, equal sign, pop. Gangstess Paradise First, appeared, of course, on the Dangerous Mind soundtrack. Kulio says that this song almost appeared in the movie Bad Boys instead, but Bad Boys wouldn't pay enough money. And this is a tragedy, in my opinion.

Will Smith, diving in slow-mo out of a helicopter, falling in slow motion for four minutes, somehow holding four Sigsawar P-226 handguns. Did I say that gun name right? Probably not. He's holding four handguns in two hands and using them to blow up a submarine to the dulcet tones of Culeo,

showing you where he's at and where he came from and the place he can never truly escape. Look at the situation they got me facing. I can't live a normal life. I was raised by the shake. So I gotta be there with the hood team. Too much television watching got me chasing dreams.

Speaking of television watching, the Gangstice Paradise video, of course, co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer. which is to say the video consists of Michelle Pfeiffer, sitting in a chair in a smoky room and listening to Cullio Rap. And I was always struck by how hard Michelle Pfeiffer listens in this video. It's just a very intense physical display of listening. It's like someone told her there was an MTV Video Music Award for Hardest Listening.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere. I'm an educated fool with money on my mind. Got my tin in my hand in the glit. in my eye. I'm a low-doubt-gast-set, tripping banker, and my homies is down so don't arouse my anger. Fool. If you've ever watched somebody do Gangstas Paradise at karaoke, I don't recommend this, then you know that you can basically determine the singer's blood alcohol level just by how hard the singer leans into the fool there. Cullio's various fools. The fools are central to the

song's force and personality and steely charisma. They help make the song distinct and unforgettable and right for homage, for parody, which in turn made this inevitable. At 4.30 in the morning, I'm milking cows. Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows. Fool and I've been milking and plow in so long that even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone. Free documentary idea. People who don't like Weird Al Yankovic. What's their deal? What makes them tick? What do they find joyful? Weird Al Yankovic's Amish Paradise appeared on his 1996 album, Bad Hair Day. Al's got Coelio Braids on the cover.

That's a 3.0. So don't be pain and don't be whiny or else my brother, I might have to get medieval on your heiney. Top five all-time Weird Al moment in the Amish Paradise video when he's churning butter. And the foxy Amish lady walks past him and he starts churning butter faster. it's the subtle tease so coolio quite famously was quite upset about amish paradise at first weird al's parodies are protected by fair use legally theoretically but he always asks an artist's permission before doing a song parody and most artists other than prince take it as a profound honor kirk Cobain was thrilled, for example. But in this case, Al's label had talked to

Kulio's label, but Kulio himself was unaware, and Al was unaware that Kulio was unaware. And backstage at the 1996 Grammys, after winning the best rap solo performance Grammy for Ganga's Paradise, beating out both Biggie and Tupac, Kulio has asked about Amish Paradise, and he said this, I ain't with that. No, I didn't give it any sanction. I think that my song was too serious. It ain't like it was beat it. Beat it was a party song. But I think Gangst's Paradise represented something more than that. And I really, honestly and truly, don't appreciate him desecrating the song like that. Al was very upset about this and very apologetic. And Cullio eventually would soften his stance on Amish Paradise. Now Cooleo will

gladly tell you that being upset about Amish Paradise was, quote, probably one of the least smart things I've done over the years. Weird Al versus Cooglio is now safe, defanged, nostalgic trivia, but Coelio, at the Grammys, using the word desecrated, knocks me sideways for a second. Gangst's Paradise is at heart a very serious song, an anguished song, a tragic song. It is a party song also due to critical mass, due to ubiquity, due to the size and diversity of its audience, due to it being a blockbuster pop song. It's a pop song no matter what Q-Tip might think, or for that matter, what Culeo might think.

There's a tense moment right at the beginning of that 1995 Rolling Stone profile of Culeo where the interviewer describes gangster's paradise as, quote, a romanticized view of the hood. And Cullio says, what do you mean, gangstice paradise is a romanticized view of the hood? I'm trying to understand why you use that description.

The interviewer backpedals. It blows over. But this tension is always there for me. right in the song, Kuio's intensity, the thrilled listeners' intensity, and the reality that those are, in all likelihood,

two very different kinds of intensity. They say I got to learn, but nobody's here to teach me. If they can't understand it, how can they reach me? I guess they can't, I guess they won't, I guess they front.

That's why I know my life is out of luck, fool. I love Weird Al. I will fight and probably die fighting for Weird Al. Al, in that Gangstas Paradise oral history, explain the rationale behind Amish Paradise this way. Amish Paradise seemed a perfect irony. The Amish lifestyle is diametrically opposed to the gangster lifestyle, and I immediately saw a lot of comedic potential in rapping about life on the mean streets of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The least generous read of Amish Paradise that I can offer you

is that for some large percentage of Weird Al's target audience, the Amish lifestyle and the gangster lifestyle are equally remote, equally exotic, equally outside of that relatively comfortable audiences' lived experience. Make of that way you will. Kulio made a sustainable, if tumultuous, career out of it. In November 95, he put Gangst's Paradise on his second album, which he called Gangst's Paradise,

and that record hit number one. His next album in 1997 was called My Soul. His next album in 2001 was called Coolio.com and so on. He was on Wife Swap and several other reality television programs. He has a cookbook. It's fairly a very good cookbook. He has lived. He has thrived even in the wide emotional spectrum suggested by the album

titles My Soul and Coolio.com. He's a lot of fun. Coolio. Have fun with Coolio. Just keep in mind, Coelio has also got a lot to say, even if a lot of it goes over a lot of people's heads. Then again, what doesn't? Our guest today is the God Christopher R. Weingarten. Writer and editor and critic, he's written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, The Village Voice, and others. He wrote a 33 and a third book about public enemies. It takes a nation of millions to hold us back. one Twitter. He's a web developer now also. He does it all. He's the best. Hello, Chris. Hi. Thanks for such a warm welcome. It is wonderful to talk to you today, Chris. And there's no one I'd

rather talk about Coolio with. I hope you will take that in the proper spirit. There's a lot going on here, but to start as simply as possible, is Gangsta's Paradise a great song? You know me. I am an inveterate listmaker, and I went to my personal list of the greatest rap singles of 1995. And on a quick look, I have Gangsters Paradise ranked around number 73 of the best rap singles of 1990s. I was hoping for top 30. I guess I have to accept top 75. Wow.

Yeah, I mean, which is to say, as a rap song, it's, you know, it's not Goody Ma'b, but, you know, as a rap-adjacent pop song, obviously it's, you know, a perennial classic and amazing. So, you know, it certainly has many, many merits. And Cullio is an incredibly underrated figure of the 90s. And I know this show is about understanding the 90s. And I want to, uh, tell you the secret to this song being the hands-down biggest song of 1995, you know, qualitatively by Bill Ford, three weeks on the top of the chart. The absolute secret to that, it's a Stevie Wonder song. That's a valid point. Yeah, it's a Stevie Wonder song, and Stevie Wonder is a Stevie Wonder. You want to know what's even more key to understand the 90s that Will Smith,

did a song about U.S. Marshal Artemis Gordon and Dr. Arlis Lovelace for his steampunk spider movie. And that went to number one. Why? It was a Stevie Wonder song. It's not rocket science. Underrated figure Stevie Wonder. Someone needs to explain Stevie. Yeah. Someone needs to explore Stevie. And it's like I honestly, upon thinking way, way too much about Gullio this week, you know, I think Stevie might be the last genius before. the MTV era started in earnest. You know, because as soon as MTV hit, you know, you had your, your altruistic figures like Prince and, you know,

Michael and Quincy and all those guys. And Stevie was like the last one before MTV sort of flattened that 20-year period, you know, where you would, you know, you'd turn on a countdown and see Cullio next to Prince and next to Michael Jackson and whatever. But, you know, Stevie was firmly in VH1 land at that point. So, you know, Coelio, you know, sort of rescued this, you know, certainly not a forgotten song. It was on songs of the key of life for fuck's sake. But, you know, he pulled it from the depths of the collective memory in a fantastic way that obviously connected.

Okay, you called it a rap-adjacent pop song. Is that distinct from a pop-adjacent rap song? Like, what is, that's the key to understanding Kulio to my mind is his struggle with, is he rap, is he pop, is he pop, is he pop-a-jason rap song. Cooleo was a very unique figure in that he walked all of those worlds brilliantly. He had incredibly hard songs, and on the other hand, he could be on all that and do the Keenan and Kell song. he was a very, very unique for a pop star at the time. It's of that moment. And I, you know, I was thinking a lot about that, about how up until about

1993, if you were going to have a hit rap song, you had to either be something that was like just grasping for that brass ring like Marky Mark or Chris Cross or MC Hammer or kind of like a novelty song, like the Humpty Dance, which, you know, rest in peace, piece, shodgy is a genius. you know, but, you know, it's a viral dance in a way, or that kind of like alternative world flukes, like PM Dawn, arrestive element, that all changed with The Chronic and Dr. Dre and what they Yeah, Snoop. Yeah, Snoop.

And what they did, and Jimmy I have been, you know, has a little hand in that too, but like, what they did was say, like, what if the hardest gangster rap record was pop music? and after that record for about two, three years, and Gakesh to Paradise is part of that two, three years, there was this idea that you could make these hardcore rap records, but you also made some concession to pop music, which is why Drey and Snoop had those, they're legendary clean versions of all those songs.

You'd sing them in the back of the school bus, and a lot of times, you know, you'd be some, in the clean version because they were so so omnipresent. Right. You know, and they made, they made that effort. And there was this whole two years of this kind of like post-G-Funk radio-friendly, hardcore rap clean versions, you know, Warren G's Regulate is not an especially filthy song. You know, however, MTV did cut it to shit because it mentioned guns and it wasn't by white people.

So, you know, Johnny Kelly. Well, yeah, no, it's like there was a spin article back then where, you know, Johnny Cash's Delia's gone from the American recording scene was out the exact same time. A very vivid and violent song. And, you know, MTV had no qualms of playing that, but Warren G got cut to shreds. You know, fantastic voyage. Not a lot of swears and fantastic voyage. And all those kind of breezy L.A. Domino's Ghetto Jam, Ahmad's back in the day. Skilos, I wish.

I forgot that one. I forgot I wish. Yeah. Stupid now. Episode 61, baby. Let's do this. All those songs, they weren't squeaky clean, but they worked well as clean versions. And you could thank you could thank Stevie Wonder because Cooleo actually went to Stevie and said,

you know, hey, we're going to do this song. He's like, I'm cool that you take all the swears out. And also give me an enormous chunk of the publishing. 95% of the publishing also. Got Stevie Wonder. I did find a tweet of years from 2012 where you said, I'm hearing the dirty version

of Culeo's fantastic voyage for the first time ever. Hashtag, mind blown. Yeah. Is Culeo on the radio or on MTV like a completely different person or at least a different artist than Cooleo,

the dirty version? I wouldn't say completely different. You know, I would say, you know, compared to like AMG or something, you know, his, you know, his stuff's very PG-13. It's not, it's not the records that we're getting people thrown in prison in Miami, you know, it's like they are, they, they're a PG-13, and there's still, like, you know,

you buy, it takes a thief, and there's still, like, songs on their, like, hands on my nut sack, and, uh, what's the other one, you know, what's the other one called ugly bitches? Ugly Bishes, yes, there's a song. Um, yeah. And, you know, it's undiluted rap, but, you know, he's not, he's, not a total potty mouth. And so he was able to make that shift very easily.

And then I think in 1996, 97, that was when Bad Boy Takeover started in earnest. And that was just like, you know, at last to rap it about Blunts and Braves. Blunts of Braves, Tits and Braves, Managee Trois, sex and expensive cars. Like that whole

thing is just unfiltered and why, you know, you turn on rap music on the radio for the last 20 years. And it's It's like Wayne Campbell and Wayne's World doing the bit where he's speaking into the driving speaker and every other word is cut out. Excellent reference. Every guest is required to make a Wayne's World reference on the show. We got that out of the way. I forgot.

Yeah. It's like you're going to have me on the Ringer podcast. I was wondering if I had to Google who Vladay Devac was before I went out. Yeah, he's fine. Blade is fine without your extensive knowledge of him. You once said that Kendrick Lamar's hole from the L.A. streets, but not of the L.A. Street's perspective was basically Culeo's lane in the 90s. Like, what do you make of early pre-fame Culeo?

Oh, you know, early pre-fame Culeo, you know, he was in W.C. in the Mad Circle. They were pretty hardcore, but Culeo still was cool. Julio, like he wasn't easy E and then turned into this kind of pop-centric thing. Like, he always was kind of that guy. And he always, always, always carry, you know, he was the first one to say, like, I'm not a gangster, which isn't to say he didn't have rough times because he had rough times in the 80s. You know, he grew up in Compton.

He, you know, he was briefly addicted to crack. He had some prison time. Like, he saw this stuff and lived this. stuff, but he gets on the other side, you know, we're talking 10 years later or whatever, and he wants to use his platform to uplift, and it's more of, it's the same kind of thing that Kendrick is doing, this kind of street reportage of like, here is this universe that I have witnessed firsthand, and, you know, I'm not going to sit here in front like I was center stage and all of it, but I saw this, you know, and it's not exploitation,

and it's, you know, it's not a scarface movie. It's, you know, it's full of regret and it's full of sad scenes and it's full of harsh truths. And, you know, he deserves a little more than he got for bringing that. Well, you did call him underrated. He is underrated. He's absolutely underrated. And, you know, it's for the quality of the music he did, you know, he never got like,

I don't think he ever got like a Rolling Stone cover or a spin cover or anything like that. I don't think so, no. But, you know, he certainly sold records and was good, you know. Important qualities. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, and, you know, in the middle of the G-Funk era, you know, he was, he was a prime figure. And, you know, he had that, he had that Ice Cube style of like, you know, people always forget, Ice Cube was funny. Like, Ice Cube, Ice Cube was hilarious. Like, you know.

He's still alive, but yeah, yeah, he was. But those, you know, the records are canonized for being highly political and expressing realities that the news didn't show the suburbs and doing all those wonderful things, which is all true. But he was also exceptionally funny. And Cullio did that exact same thing where he was like socially conscious, but also really funny. Like his first single for Tommy Boy was about, you know, he was a rapper and still had to go stand in the welfare line. County line. County line. You know, he painted those things very vividly and with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue,

and he deserves a little more credit than he got. Yeah. Is Weird Al versus Coolio a situation where you have to take a side? Cooleo recognized the error of his ways many years later. You know, Coelio realized he was being ridiculous and has since made a man. with Weird Al. He has. He calls it like the not smartest thing he ever did, you know, feuding with Weird Al.

Yeah. You know, and that it's like, you know, I think I just saw Coolio. I think Coolio has a really good sense of humor. I just saw him on that new Robert Smigel show. Right, right, right. He's, I mean, you know, even when he was around, like he was down with being funny. There was the one music video. I can't remember the name of it.

What he had, uh, uh, uh, what he had, uh, uh, you know, and he could stuff in the dryer and he's twirling around the dryer. Like it's, you know, like he, he was, he was down to, to goof around and have fun with this, you know, he was great. He still is great. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about Weird Al, like, he has

other rap parodies, like, all about the Pentiums, white and nerdy, of course. I think, I think, how much Paradise was the first. I think it was, too, and I think. Unless you count the Beastie Boy style parody twister. Wow. Well, let's litigate that some other time.

Do you think that Amish Paradise made Al leery of rap, of just more careful that there was like an added dimension that he was dealing with when he parodies a rap song? And especially a rap song like Gainesville's Paradise was just talking about like something very real and very visceral. Do you think that it changed the way Al thought about what he did? I think Al has said, like, look, you know, it was like the first time. he did a rap song. There's so many more words you can put in the song.

Yes, he did say that. You know, it's a volume thing. You can cram in so many more jokes and so many more things. If anything, the legacy of Amish Paradise is helping kickstart nerdcore rap, which is a huge minus in the al pile.

Okay, I was going to ask. Yeah, I had a feeling. Yeah, that's, you know, that, you know, But he did white and nerdy not too long after that. That song dealt with some very heavy things too. I think once your song becomes part of the American firmament, it's open for that type of stuff. And I think most artists realize that.

Maybe Coelho didn't realize that at the time, but he certainly realizes it now. And I think that might have even helped kickstart like the third phase of Al's career. It did. It did seem like it revitalized him. I think that's true enough. What is the cultural footprint of gangstress paradise now?

I was thinking a lot about this. And I don't think gangster's paradise for something that was like a number one song for three weeks and just like the hands down hugest song of 1995. I can't say it has a huge culture. footprint as far as artists saying like, man, you know, when I was coming up, it was Biggie and and Pock and Cooio. Like, they don't, they don't say that. However, I will say, like, it was a really prescient song. It was really ahead of its time because a lot of rap right now is like this kind of sing-song music about sadness and regret and repentance. That's true. You know, it's like you can, people call out like a modern blues or whatever,

but you can trace that kind of young boy NBA, Kevin Gates style of, you know, where they sort of combine Culeo with LV and sort of paint this picture of this, you know, rough and tumble world they live in. And you know, yeah,

and then obviously Kendrick, he'll say the mad and mad city stands for other things, but, you know, WC, that's Compton's own WC in the Mad Circle. He alludes to that. certainly. Yeah. We're talking here in early July 2021. We had a Biz Marquis death scare a couple days ago.

It's clear at the very least that Biz is in very poor health. To your mind, how much overlap is there Biz Marquis and Kulio? And like we're starting to see not eulogies, but just a lot of tributes to Biz Marquis. And do you think people are treating biz as the well-rounded figure, you know, that he deserves to be seen as in the same in a sort of Kulio viz. Well, you know, Bizz and Culeo really have one thing in common, and that's their ability to appear on I Love the 90s package tours. Even though, even though I'm the guy who's going to be like, well, technically, and that song came out in 1989. Yeah, well, too bad. Total Oak and Young MC are on there, too.

Yeah, no. 89 is in the 90s, yeah. Yeah, no, definitely ruffles my nerd feathers. am I to expect this to be some type of magical rap song? This has been absolutely fantastic. It is wonderful to see you to hear your voice. Chris, do you have anything you'd like to plug today? Well, Rob, in the words of a great poet,

I'm an educated fool with money on my mind. It's just spontaneous plugging you're doing right now. And I have... become a front-end developer. So if you think it would be at all clever or neat to have the guy you heard on the Ringer podcast be your front-end developer, I know React.js, No.js, JavaScript, CSS, Git, and Prisma.

Holler at me on LinkedIn. Damn. That's last question, Chris. How many CDs are on the wall behind you? Oh, man. Approximately. people can't see this it's what is it 12 rows stacked to the ceiling five shelves total i would say it's about 350 dollars worth at this point that is the way that is the way to count at this point Chris I think that's a Papademus joke props to God bless Papademus absolutely thank you so much Chris thank you for having me man I appreciate it of course of course thanks so much to our guest this week

R. Wine Garden. Thanks to our producers, Isaac Lee and Justin Sales, and thanks to you for listening. And now, without further ado, here we have Coolio doing Gangstis Paradise. We'll see you next week.