LYNDSEY PARKER: So, obviously, this samples a Stevie Wonder song. She just came- somebody asked her to do something. So to tell you the truth, she wasn't that interested in what was going on. Like I said, she had her babies with her. I asked her a couple generic bull- questions and just small talk pretty much. We didn't talk a lot, you know, hi, how you doing. It was as easy for her as it was for me, I think. I thought she was going to be scared.ĬOOLIO: She brought her twins with her.
And when she showed, I was, OK, she's not scared. LYNDSEY PARKER: Tell me your memories of making the music video, where you're sitting so iconically with Michelle Pfeiffer.ĬOOLIO: At first, I didn't think she was going to show up. When they put the song in it, it gave it that emotional and human element. They were scrambling trying to do whatever they could to make that not happen. I thought it was going to be Michelle Pfeiffer's first flop.
And I knew that the movie having the song in it helped the song, gave it a better chance than it would have had on its own. LYNDSEY PARKER: What was your perception of the movie 25 years ago compared to now?ĬOOLIO: I knew that the song being in the movie helped the movie. But just, you know, those kind of movies are cliche as hell. And nobody- nobody- there's not that many people that care about each other. Everybody knows that those kind of moments happen very few and far in between. LYNDSEY PARKER: How do you feel that movie, "Dangerous Minds," has aged? Because I feel like that movie now seems a little antiquated, you know.ĬOOLIO: To be honest with you, I hate those kind of movies where, you know, the great White hope comes into the inner city neighborhood and saves the little children- oh, la, la, la, hey, Santa Claus, or, you know, whatever. It would be perfect for this movie that I'm working on. When she heard "Gangsta's Paradise," she froze. Yo, there was a lady named Kathy Green, she did acquisitions for Disney at the time, for Disney- she did acquisitions for Disney films. If you think about it, if they would have thought that it had been a monster hit like that, there's no way they would have let it be on a soundtrack.ĬOOLIO: There's no way they would sharing the revenue of that.
They will- they will deny that right now.ĬOOLIO: Because they denied it shortly after that. When I let the record company hear it, their exact words were, oh, yeah, this is a good album. So I guess the obvious question to start with was, did you know what you had on your hands? Did you know it was going to be this big of a monster hit?ĬOOLIO: I was pretty excited about it, to tell you the truth. We are coming up on the 25th anniversary of "Gangsta's Paradise," which came out August 8, 1995.Īnd it was the biggest single of the entire year. LYNDSEY PARKER: Hi, Coolio, thank you for joining me today. Video Transcriptīeen standing most their lives living in a gansta's paradise. He explains how Stevie Wonder signed off on the sample usage, Wonder's involvement in their performance at the 1995 Billboard Music Awards, and the feud that sprung up between him and "Weird Al" Yankovic after the parodist released his "Amish Paradise" spoof. Rapper Coolio talks to Yahoo Entertainment about how his smash hit, "Gangsta's Paradise" came to be.