It's December 1995. Everywhere you turn in Australia, it seems like only one song is playing.
Key points:
It begins with a haunting string sample some listeners recognise from a vintage Stevie Wonder track, layered over simple hip-hop percussion and deep bass.
After 11 seconds, there's a clap of snare drum, and a man starts quoting a Bible verse made famous the year before by Samuel L Jackson in Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction.
If you instantly heard the next lyric, "I take a look at my life and realise there's nuthin' left", then this article is for you.
Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise turns 25 this year, and its place in music history is assured.
It was believed to be the biggest-selling single of 1995 worldwide, and went to number 1 in at least 19 countries.
In America, it won a Grammy for best rap solo performance and, as of 2018, it was among the 100 biggest selling singles of all time; in the UK it was number 31 by the same measure.
In Australia, it stayed at number 1 for 13 weeks - a long-standing record in the ARIA Charts-era that was only broken in 2017 by Ed Sheeran's Shape Of You (who was in turn superseded by Tones & I's Dance Monkey in 2019) - and was 1995's biggest-selling single here.
But where did this song come from, and what happened to the artist, born Artis Leon Ivey Jr, better known as Coolio?
Welcome to paradise
Like most good hip-hop songs, Gangsta's Paradise started with a great sample — in this case the sound of a string section as replicated by a Yamaha GX-1 synthesizer; a keyboard so advanced and rare that in 1975, when the riff was recorded, it cost US$60,000 — about AU$407,000 today.
The sample is from the opening of Stevie Wonder's track Pastime Paradise, off his revered 1976 double album Songs In The Key Of Life.
When anyone asked Wonder what string section he hired to play the part, Wonder would tell them it was the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing the part.
In reality it was Wonder himself, tapping on the GX-1 in Crystal Sounds studio in Hollywood.
It was not the only thing Gangsta's Paradise borrowed from Wonder's Pastime Paradise — both share a chorus, with some minor but important lyrical adjustments by singer Larry Sanders, known by stage name L.V., of Los Angeles gangsta rap group South Central Cartel.
The song was whipped up quickly at a studio in an LA house shared by producer Doug Rasheed and Coolio's manager Paul Stewart, with L.V. adding his flavour to the hook, as well as being every voice in the choir "from soprano down to tenor to the bass", as he told Rolling Stone in 2015.
As is often the case in these kinds of stories, Coolio happened to be passing by and instantly recognised it as something special.
After freestyling the opening lines, he sat down and wrote all three verses in a single sitting, detailing a young man weighing up his gangster lifestyle and wondering if there is any way out of it.
"I like to believe that it was divine intervention," Coolio told Rolling Stone of the song's quick birth.
A thing of Wonder
As the song took shape, everyone involved in its creation thought it was a winner.
Only problem was, no one had cleared the sample or the chorus interpolation with Stevie Wonder.
Someone got the track to Wonder, who was unhappy about his work being "used in some gangster song," as Coolio put it.
But a meeting was arranged and Wonder eventually gave permission, so long as Coolio removed a couple of n-words and f-words from the original lyrics.
Coolio complied, making it one of the few "clean" tracks in his back catalogue.
A meeting of Dangerous Minds
Wonder's approval, which apparently came with a sizeable share of any future profits, was timely.
Coolio's manager was already shopping the song to filmmakers in the hopes of landing a potentially lucrative soundtrack spot.
They got a taker in Dangerous Minds, an upcoming Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle based on former US Marine LouAnne Johnson's experiences teaching black and Latino kids.
To complete the symbiosis, Pfeiffer agreed to star in the film clip with Coolio — an unheard-of collaboration at the time between white Hollywood and gangsta rap.
A groundswell began.
The film, despite getting mostly negative reviews, was a box office smash and the soundtrack flew off the shelves, driven by lead single Gangsta's Paradise and its Antoine Fuqua-directed film clip, which became an MTV staple.
Critics were impressed by the song.
Entertainment Weekly's David Browne wrote it "may be the bleakest tune ever to top the pop singles chart".
"With its ghostly choir and lyrics about a gun-toting 23-year-old who kneels in the streetlight wondering if he'll live to see 24, it examines the abyss with journalistic coolness," he wrote in his B+ review of Coolio's album.
Taking it to the streets
Slowly but surely, Gangsta's Paradise began to take over the world.
In Australia, national youth network triple j was one of the first radio stations to play it.
Francis Leach, a triple j presenter at the time, recalled it being one of the few hip-hop songs on high rotation.
"I just remember playing it a lot on the radio — like it was a huge, huge hit," Leach said.
"[triple j] didn't have a lot of hip-hop at the time.
"My comrades were very much part of what became known as grunge … also there was an incredible renaissance in Australian rock music — that tended to crowd a lot of stuff out.
"But I think it probably reflected the lack of diversity in on-air talent — I mean, we were all white middle-class or working-class kids.
But Gangsta's Paradise cut through the noise of mostly white men playing guitars.
"It's got a great sense of drama and feel — it's a solid gold classic for sure," Leach said.
The song landed at number 3 in triple j's Hottest 100 of 1995, setting a then-record as the highest-ranking hip-hop song in the countdown — a record that would not be surpassed until 2012.
In fact, it would be the only hip-hop song to make the Hottest 100's top 10 until 2001.
Still cookin'
Coolio never had another hit on the scale of Gangsta's Paradise, leaving many to pin him as a one-hit wonder, but the rapper had seven top-50 hits in Australia.
He failed to trouble the charts after 1997, but has kept releasing albums including last year's Nobody's Foolio, and built up a sideline in acting and as a celebrity chef, with a cookbook and short-lived web series called Cookin' with Coolio.
Twenty-five years on, the size of the venues has changed, but Coolio is still doing what he loves.
An Aussie tour in 2018 saw him playing suburban pubs and according to his website he is hoping to hit the road again in 2021 (COVID permitting), including a stopover in Australia.
Should the tour happen, you can bet the biggest singalong will be for Gangsta's Paradise.
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2020-12-05 00:08:00Z
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