Al Yankovic Posts Tribute to Coolio as Late Rapper’s Views on ‘Amish Paradise’ Re-Emerge
Coolio #Coolio
Weird Al Yankovic is paying tribute to late rapper Coolio following his sudden death at age 59.
On Wednesday night, Yankovic, 62, posted a simple message in honor of Coolio on both Twitter and Instagram: a photo of the pair embracing one another at an event.
“RIP Coolio,” Yankovic added about the rapper, whose 1995 Grammy-Award-winning single “Gangsta’s Paradise” inspired his hit satire “Amish Paradise.”
The 1996 parody stands as one of Yankovic’s most popular songs, with over 126 million lifetime views on YouTube and 30.9 million streams on Spotify.
As Yankovic and others paid tribute to Coolio in the hours after his death Wednesday, music fans remembered the feud that emerged between the two over “Amish Paradise,” which initially rubbed Coolio the wrong way.
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“I ain’t with that…I think that my song was too serious…I really…don’t appreciate him desecrating the song like that,” Coolio told a reporter at the 1996 Grammy Awards, according to Vulture. “His record company asked for my permission, and I said no. But they did it anyway…”
By 2011, though, Coolio appeared to have reconsidered his stance on Yankovic’s parody.
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“I sat down, and I really thought it out,” Coolio told students at the Institute of Production & Recording in a 2011 interview, according to Yahoo! News. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I was like, ‘Coolio, who the f— do you think you are? He did Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson didn’t get mad.’ “
After Coolio’s death Wednesday, journalist Dan Ozzi shared an excerpt of an interview he once did with Coolio on Twitter, during which he asked the late rapper about any lingering resentment toward Yankovic.
In the excerpt, which does not specify when the interview happened, Coolio told Ozzi he “let that go so long ago.”
“Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong. Y’all remember that, everybody out there who reads this s—. Real men and real people should be able to admit when they’re wrong and I was wrong, bro,” Coolio said at the time.
“Come on, who the f— am I, bro? He did parodies of Michael Jackson, he did parodies of all kinds of people and I took offense to it because I was being cocky and s— and being stupid and I was wrong and I should’ve embraced that s— and went with it,” he continued.
RELATED: Coolio Was Working on New Music with Irish Singer Christy Dignam Before His Death: ‘A Banger’
Coolio said in that interview that when he finally listened to “Amish Paradise,” he thought it was “actually funny as s—.”
“It’s one of those things where I made a wrong call and nobody stopped me. That’s one thing I’m still upset about – my management at the time,” Coolio told Ozzi. “Somebody should’ve stopped me from making that statement because it was dumb. And I think it hurt me a little bit. It made me seem stupid.”
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Coolio’s longtime manager, Jarez Posey, told PEOPLE that Coolio — born Artis Leon Ivey Jr. — died Wednesday in Los Angeles.
According to TMZ, who was first to report the news, Posey said the late musician went to the bathroom at a friend’s house. When he didn’t come out, the friend called his name but he didn’t answer. They then found Coolio on the floor.
The friend called for help, per the outlet, and once responders arrived, Coolio was pronounced dead.
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