Coolio, 'Gangsta's Paradise' rapper, dead at 59

Coolio, the ’90s rapper who lit up the music charts with hits like “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Fantastic Voyage,” has died, his friend and manager Jarez Posey, told CNN. He was 59.

Posey stated that Coolio died on Wednesday afternoon in Los Angles.

The circumstances of the incident were not immediately known.

According to his bio on his official website, Coolio was born in Compton, California.

In 1994, he spoke to the Los Angeles Times about his drug addiction and how he got out of it by becoming a firefighter.

“I wasn’t looking for a career, I was looking for a way to clean up – a way to escape the drug thing,” he told the publication. “It was going to kill me and I knew I had to stop. It was the discipline I needed in firefighting training. Every day, we ran. I wasn’t drinking or smoking or doing the stuff I usually did.”

His rap career began in the ’80s and he gained fame in the underground scene.

“Fantastic Voyage” was the first song that really put him on the map.

Arguably his biggest song, “Gangsta’s Paradise,” from the soundtrack to the film “Dangerous Minds,” grew his star power to gigantic proportions. The song won him a Grammy in 1996.

It has survived in the age of streaming. The song reached a record one billion views on YouTube in July 2022.

“It’s one of those kinds of songs that transcends generations,” he said in a recent interview. “I didn’t use any trendy words…I think it made it timeless.”

According to his website, Coolio sold over 17 million records during his career.

Coolio also has a special place in the hearts of some Millennials for his work on the theme song for the popular Nickelodeon TV series “Kenan and Kel” and his contribution to the album “Dexter’s Laboratory: The Hip-Hop Experiment,” which featured songs by various hip-hop artists that were inspired by the Cartoon Network animated series.

In recent years, Coolio enjoyed the perks of being a nostalgic figure, making television appearances on shows like “Celebrity Cook Off” and “Celebrity Chopped.”

He also had a show on Oxygen, “Coolio’s Rules,” that aired 2008.

This story is still in development and will be updated.

Megan Thomas contributed to the report.