Gangsta's Paradise

About

"Gangsta's Paradise" is a song by rapper Coolio featuring singer L.V. The song has been recognized as one of the best of all time by Billboard and has been widely parodied and used in other media.

Origin

"Gangsta's Paradise was released by Coolio on September 20th, 1995. The song samples Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise"^[1] and appears on Coolio's album of the same name and the soundtrack for the film Dangerous Minds.

Spread

The song was a hit for Coolio, and was the top-selling single of 1995.^[2] The track netted Coolio a Grammy, an MTV VMA for Best Rap Video and Best Video for a Film, and a Billboard Music Award. It hit number 1 in 14 different countries. The song was most notably parodied by Weird Al Yankovic in 1996 as "Amish Paradise," though Coolio argued he did not give Weird Al permission to use the song at the time.^[3]

The song has seen popular parodies on YouTube as well. Some examples include a Minecraft parody by Alpaka Whacker posted November 2nd, 2012 that gained over 420,000 views (shown below, left) and "Hispanic Paradise" by David Lopez posted April 8th, 2018, gaining over 570,000 views (shown below, right).

The song has remained a pop culture staple since its release, appearing in numerous films and trailers, such as 2010's Green Hornet (shown below, left) and 2014's Tammy (shown below, right).

Sonic Trailer Usage

The track was used in the first trailer for 2019's live action Sonic the Hedgehog film.

The usage of the song was criticized as many didn't understand its inclusion. Uproxx^[4] covered reactions to the trailer, many of whom joked about how Coolio famously was unhappy with "Amish Paradise" yet was okay with the Sonic trailer. Weird Al himself joked that he was uncomfortable with Paramount "parodying" "Amish Paradise" (shown below, left). User @EhsanDDT made a joke about the inclusion that gained over 2,400 retweets and 7,600 likes (shown below, right).

Weird Al and Coolio later made up, and following Coolio's death in September of 2022, many posters celebrated the wisdom and maturity he showed in mending bridges with Weird Al. A tweet (seen below) by journalist Dan Ozzi, sharing an excerpt from an interview with Coolio about the feud, received over 107,000 likes in the course of two days.^[6]

Following the trailer's release, a 2007 AMV of footage from Sonic games set to "Gangsta's Paradise" by a YouTuber named TheMentok resurfaced (shown below). The user appeared to play into the coincidence by editing a comment to read "12 years from now…there will be a live-action Sonic movie based on my video."

L.V. Singing Reaction

In 2018, images of L.V., the artist who sings the chorus to "Gangsta's Paradise and who appears in the video, were used in a series of image macros that use the song's chorus to express ironic oppression. One of the earliest available meme that features the shot was published on December 7th, 2018 by Redditor Remenio, though it is likely not the origin of the meme (shown below, left).

Over the next few years, people continued to share variations of the meme (examples below, center and right).

Search Interest

External References