In memory of Coolio

The game and the world need unpretentious good-time rap music!

Rest in peace to the illustrious Coolio! I am very much in favour of the revisionist movement which has seen pop-rap stars who were once understood as irredeemably corny, such as Skee-Lo, MC Hammer, and Afroman, embraced as legitimate OGs in rap culture in the past 20 years or so, and no one was more deserving of that appreciative reappraisal than Coolio, whose understated charisma lent more weight to “Hit ‘Em High” than anyone gave him credit for in 1996, who was a strikingly clear-eyed youthful presence on “Color Blind” in 1991, and who was generally a charming and affable presence in the street-rap underground in the years before and after his sudden fame. My heart aches for WC, long one of my favourite rappers, both of whose lieutenants in the Maad Circle are now in the realm beyond, but I don’t doubt that Coolio and DJ Crazy Toones are finna cook up some heaters in paradise. Shoutout to Montell Jordan, Ras Kass, LL Cool J, Method Man, B-Real, Busta Rhymes, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Kam, Threat, King T, the two Josephs of the Insane Clown Posse (with whom Coolio was down for centuries), and everyone else who will be mourning this loss. Coolio might not have been one of the all-time greats, but he brought flavour to the game that has endured and that will live on, and that’s all the legacy a person really needs.