Coolio — Gangsta's Paradise

The song "Gangsta's Paradise" is the foundation stone of three different albums released over two summers: the soundtrack of the movie "Dangerous Minds", this self-titled album by Artis Leon "Coolio" Ivey Jr. and the debut of Larry "LV" Sanders.

 

In particular, the song drags, by itself, the entire soundtrack of that film to the top spot on the Billboard 200 and triple platinum, to the delight of the MCA. The incredible and unexpected response of the public convinces Tommy Boy not to lose the hype of Coolio, who in a couple of months releases his second solo LP. In these two records there's practically only this track and nothing else, and that's enough to gain the favor of the critics and to make the sales shine: when the CD comes out, Tommy Boy gets to taste only a small cold slice of that hype, the record rips certifications in a dozen countries, is twice platinum at home, but it stops just inside the top ten in the pop chart and outside that of rap records, going better in the German-speaking countries.

The funky boom bap production of these guys is good, they choose hard and skinny midtempo drums, deep bass and a number of melodic interpolations from funk, rnb and soul songs. The lyrics are mainly on ghetto life, socio-conscious, party and in the second part the record settles in the field of ballad, with several pop hooks sung. Overall, the album is fluid, smooth, accessible, it's a good mainstream product that brings the rapper a lot of fame: it starts very well in the first ten minutes with "Gelo Highlites" and the following track, great lyrics, great beats, remarkable performances, then the record goes down and doesn't reach that level of quality anymore. The title track remains essential, it's the highest point of the career of the Compton rapper: supported by a spectacular production by Doug Rasheed, author of a cinematic rhythm that blends excellent bass lines, dirty and dusty drums, splendid strings, dark mood and gospel, Coolio records a masterful performance. The MC is smooth, energetic, clear, lucid, deep, and LV's hook, greeted by an ethereal chorus in the background, is simply flawless.

Coolio makes the song and sends it to Tommy Boy, the executives don't want it: they see the title, just listen to the hook and conclude "nah, the gangsta is over. Enough of this stuff". It's devoid of curse words, at the request of Stevie Wonder, who authorizes the use of the sample from "Pastime Paradise" in exchange for this condition. The artist's management tries to use it for the soundtrack of some movies, and manages to convince a couple of productions in 1995, focusing on the right horse. "Dangerous Minds" becomes one of the most famous cases of "white savior": wrapped in a deliberately stereotyped hip-hop background, Michelle Pfeiffer hypnotizes a tough class of African American and Hispanic American teenagers for a whole year, teaching them the right values in life through a different method of doing pedagogy, which includes wearing a leather jacket, doing karate moves, throwing candies and analyzing Bob Dylan's texts.

After the credits stop scrolling, you're left with questions that this bad farce doesn't answer: what did this blond Superman in a leather jacket do, why are these guys here, why are they so violent, why are they so rude, what's really behind their discomfort? The answers are found in the song "Gangsta's Paradise", an authentic masterpiece, and one of the best hip-hop tracks of the decade. The music video is even better. The first thing you hear is a beating heart and the shot opens with a person walking in the dark hall of a school, passing fearfully among rows of kids, lament of a crying child, while someone is waiting for her in a classroom in the dark. When the violins start playing, tense and wonderful, it turns out that it's Pfeiffer, tense and wonderful, who reaches Coolio, he starts hardcore right now and delivers what is literally the [mainstream] rap song of the year.

His flow is velvety, energetic, confident, clear, crisp, and lucid, melancholic, thoughtful. He's at his best, perfectly supported by an excellent bassline and impeccable drum, hard, dry, dusty, and dirty, which allows him to land the chorus, thanks in part to excellent breath control. So, LV: the singer faces the most difficult task of his life; he must deliver a hook that's pop enough to be catchy, hip-hop enough not to be killed by purists, and without standing out too much from the rapper. LV is perfect here: greeted by an ethereal melodic chorus in the background, he delivers a simply impeccable chorus. His delivery is warm, calm, powerful, and deep, and his work completes the track and elevates it among the best of one of rap's finest seasons. Coolio returns for the second verse and kills the cut again with a calm, velvety, crisp, confident flow, spitting bars in Pfeiffer's face. Completely devoid of profanity, it's one of the best gangsta tracks in history, if not the best. LV's second hook, this time without the melodic chorus in the background, is a pre-hook, which LV executes exceptionally well, sounding deep and powerful again with his commanding voice, then delivers the hook, supported by the chorus. Coolio sinks in again for the third verse: calm, hardcore, aggressive, confident, before LV's final hook. LV's wonderful, touching outro brings the song to a definitive close. An iconic, legendary cut. Classic. Masterpiece.

The Compton-native MC brings Pfeiffer and that goddamn leather jacket back to class, to finally explain to everyone who didn't understand, what happened in this movie: this time it's he who gives a lesson to the teacher, who has now lost her girl next-door look of the beginning of the film, to present a more gangsterous attitude, as if to say, "yo, bro, I'm rap too, just like you". That's not all. The scene where the girl arrives in front of Coolio is disrespectful in a way that you don't even notice, it's deeply subliminal: the teacher sits in front of him with the backrest turned backwards, which rather than being something hip-hop, is a senseless boorish action, and without wasting any more time, she also hastily adds a bold phrase said with a haughty attitude, which is inappropriate of the figure that the actress has played throughout the movie, as if she had much more important things to do than show up in front of a guy in an abandoned classroom of this school forgotten by everybody.

These scarce initial twenty seconds explain a lot more than they actually want to do. Coolio is going to answer those questions in the most serious, clear and accessible way possible, and he's going to explain the social hardship that he and generations of people raised in the poorest neighborhoods are forced to suffer in the course of life, in which parental and school education is replaced by television and wrong models of life, leaving a huge void of culture and moral values that is filled with the culture of success, violence, popularity and easy money. Nonetheless, nobody wants to listen to him. Nobody is there for that. Nobody wants to understand his explanation, his motives, what these guys are doing in this class and why they've these kinds of behaviors. It's an immeasurable waste of time for them. In the era of savage consumerism and of MTV, if the explanation lasts longer than a quickie, there's no reason for it to take place and for you to waste precious time on it. Twenty-five seconds after Coolio starts, Pfeiffer gets up and throws the chair on the floor. And what did I just write? Lesson over. The song could end here too, because peoples have stopped listening.

The single is released. Most of the audience that is going to get this pop rap song just wants to dance and have fun without worries, the song shouldn't be as successful. If the gangsta is over, the conscious never started, and this song should make you think, it's so clean and well done in every aspect that it might even make you think, which is always a problem. At this point, the music industry wisely decides to respond to the needs of the mass and turn it into a danceable song, which you can casually sing at karaoke, into a party anthem, mainstream, pure. Legitimate. It wins Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance, beating 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. What was meant to be a mighty underground favorite, becomes a song with a quiet and mild reach.

It's an unstoppable global success: first worldwide, platinum in a dozen countries, triple platinum at home and one of the fifteen best-selling singles of the decade all-genre, second in rap behind "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans. At the end of the year, it's the best-selling song in five countries, including the United States, being surpassed in the UK by a double cover by Robson & Jerome, and in Germany by Vangelis. It's quite curious that it's second in Germany, a land where it should have had the road paved simply to have managed to have Pfeiffer in the video clip: in the fall of 1994, boxer Henry Maske defeats Iran Barkley for the IBF light heavyweight title, confirming himself undefeated in front of 15 million viewers, using as the theme song a gem released three years earlier for a soundtrack, "Conquest of Paradise" by Vangelis — one of the best compositions of the genius — helping to bring the piece to the first place in the Teutonic country.

The industry not only won, it prevailed. Coolio's opera omnia, one of the most brilliant moments in the history of socio-conscious hip-hop and one of the most visible songs for mainstream rap, becomes a danceable track whose lyrics pass in the third, perhaps fourth place. No matter how much Coolio soul there's, it goes beyond the deep bars, the ones with Crips slang (the single cover is blue for that, and he's dressed in blue in the album cover for the same reason), the ones about life and death, because six months later, you're still dancing; Weird Al Yankovic's parody-masterpiece "Amish Paradise" arrives, unwittingly completes the industry's work: now that this song, having been rendered ineffective, is also ridiculed, it can descend into mass culture as the forgotten work of a random one-hit wonder, unfairly.

Rating: 7.5/10.