Coolio was also the voice of Kwanzabot

Ozoneocean wrote:

Ok, so why doe s NO ONE ever me tion that Colio simply changed the words to an old Stevie Wonder song. Just like a child writing their own words to any old pop song or like Weird Al did to Coolios version.
People pretend that Coolio was clever for that song when I
The truth is the exact opposite.

The rap genre was largely built on repurposing earlier music as a base for new lyrical exposition. I suppose questioning one single example of that would be like pointing out the elephant in the room at an elephant compound?

Ozoneocean wrote:

Coolio did a song called “Gangsta's Paradise” to promote the Michelle Pfeiffer movie Dangerous Minds.
People really love it and he was proud of it.
Back in the day he got annoyed when Weird Al Jankovic did a comedy version.

Ok, so why doe s NO ONE ever mention that Colio simply changed the words to an old Stevie Wonder song.
People pretend that Coolio was clever for that song when I
The truth is the exact opposite.

Past time Paradise is a clever Stevie Wonder song. Coolio's childish derivative version is not.

And there are several jazz covers of the Stevie Wonder tune. Usually no mention of the Coolio version except one time it was said to be a cover of the Stevie Wonder work. The NPR jazz station often shares lots of trivia about the works and artists. Most of the hosts have been in jazz long enough to know things personally or have interviewed people who did the work. You get a real education listening to the station.

But Weird Al did it best anyway. Amish Paradise? And the video? Genius stuff.

bravo1102 wrote:
And there are several jazz covers of the Stevie Wonder tune.

There are no covers in jazz, only performances, interpretations, extemporizations, arrangements and recordings. You make a very good point though, because the same might be said of rap/hip hop. Countless folk songs are based on the same tunes with different lyrics too.

At what point does a work of any kind stop being a ‘cover’ and become a statement in its own right?

Stevie Wonder is unappreciated in the states. He was at the height of his popularity when I was very young and he was paraded around on the Cosby show. Adults recognize him as a musical genius.

The first time I really “heard” him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZnv6qLWPy4

His performance with Coolio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C2Np-P3ZrY

What I think you should be listening to. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C01nBm6vV5c

Once thing that I loved about Stevie Wonder's music is that it always sounded so ahead of its time . . . but, in a good way. Like when you listen to a song like “For Once in my Life,” it honestly doesn't sound like just another song you'd hear on the radio, it sounds more like something that was recorded for a movie soundtrack, especially with its big, sweeping orchestral underscoring . . . which, I know a lot of more modern, tweeny-bop pop songs were trying to do back in the early New Tens *cough*CallMeMaybe*cough* but none of them pulled it off as well as Stevie Wonder did.

On the subjects of Stevie Wonder and covers, I have to admit, his cover of The Beatles' “We Can Work it Out” is so super funky that it's actually delightful.

Ironscarf wrote:

bravo1102 wrote:
And there are several jazz covers of the Stevie Wonder tune.

There are no covers in jazz, only performances, interpretations, extemporizations, arrangements and recordings. You make a very good point though, because the same might be said of rap/hip hop. Countless folk songs are based on the same tunes with different lyrics too.

At what point does a work of any kind stop being a ‘cover’ and become a statement in its own right?

You forgot re-imaginings.

bravo1102 wrote:

You forgot re-imaginings.

The sad truth of my failed application to jazz academy.

The song was particularly lazy in the way it was made, not in a clever repurposing way, it's more the kind of appropriation that comedy versions only get away with because they're parodies.
I mean Led Zeppelin still get roasted for turning song concepts into totally different songs, with people saying they “stole” the song (seriously, listen to the original Levee Breaks and then listen to the Led Zeppelin Version and try and try and work out why anyone thinks it's the same song.)
And yet with Coolio it's never addressed.

It feels sort of like the he's a “special” kid in the classroom so we have to clap extra hard when he he does something creative, even if he basically just wrote his name on another kid's picture.

Zeppelin basically borrowed some lyrics and song titles and completely reinvented the pieces they did. It's mind blowing. The Stones did straight homages for the most part and Mick Jagger when he's good, he's very good but sometimes it's just painful.

Dude, Coolio was not hiding the fact that this was a Stevie Wonder song any more than other rappers (Will Smith, Run DMC, MC Hammer, the list goes on) he literally did a performance with Stevie Wonder (and that shows the difference between the songs when he shows up doing the original lyrics) and deferred to him when it came to not including profanity which probably helped it chart because it didn't need to be radio edited, it was the subject matter of the song resonating with the culture at the time (and still does). He paid a ridiculous amount for the rights to use Wonder's song (95% of publishing) I think Wonder got more than his fair share of dues for the usage of his material so I don't see what the grievance is other than a bias against the rap genre with rap being added to a song that didn't have rap in it before. You don't have to love rap, but I do not like seeing this disrespect of Coolio and I take issue with you calling him childish for doing something many, many other musicians have done. He didn't claim originality– that was your assumption, and all the other people acting surprised on youtube. If you never heard the original song before, why get so defensive of it.

It was a collaboration, and Coolio didn't even come up with the concept since you're going to characterize him as “childish” for “copying”, he never claimed to come up with the idea. L.V. who sings the chorus/hook (all of that is entirely his singing in fact) which is the part that borrows from the Wonder original (along with the instrumentals) and L.V. was the guy who came up with the idea of repurposing the song and shopped it around to other rappers before Coolio heard it and wanted to rap for it. L.V. came up with the idea of changing it to “Gangsta's Paradise” while Coolio wrote the rest of the lyrics based around the concept, some of them freestyle. To suggest he just did a find and replace on anything beyond the chorus is just dishonest when you actually look at the lyrics or even listen to the 2 songs side by side at all.

And not to put down Stevie Wonder, but you're acting like he wasn't just putting words that rhyme next to each other:

Tell me, who of them will come to be?
How many of them are you and me?
Dissipation
Of race relations
Consolation
Segregation
Dispensation
Isolation
Exploitation
Mutilation
Mutation
Miscreation
Confirmation to the evils of the world

Whereas Coolio starts with–

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I take a look at my life and realize there's not much left
'Cause I've been blastin' and laughin' so long, that
Even my mama thinks that my mind is gone
But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it
Me be treated like a punk, you know that's unheard of
You better watch how you're talkin', and where you're walkin'
Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk
I really hate to trip but I gotta loc
As they croak, I see myself in the pistol smoke, fool
I'm the kinda G the little homies wanna be like
On my knees in the night, sayin' prayers in the streetlight

Of course you are welcome to enjoy Wonder reading a list of Ten Dollar Words that rhyme but Coolio's opening line is perfection and the narrative is way easier to understand. Yeah, it's a bible quote who cares? It fits the song perfectly and speaks to the complicated emotions he's trying to convey. That is why it is considered one of the best openings to a rap song of all time.


Also? You guys are really gonna praise Weird Al for the cover that would literally not exist if not for the Coolio version?! Come on…

What elevates Amish Paradise is there's just more lyrics in it. Yankovic takes great pains to not repeat the same sentences aside from “Living In an Amish Paradise”. Al's priority being comedy, repeating the same line kills the potential to do more jokes. The other 2 are more sincere and repeating the lines is kind of the point.

Originality is overrated anyway, I think all 3 iterations of the song are great in their own individual ways, this sour attitude against transformative work is what leads to the worst of copyright laws.

RIP, Coolio.

Ozoneocean wrote:
Back in the day he got annoyed when Weird Al Jankovic did a comedy version.

He got annoyed because when Weird Al asked for permission, someone else (his producer) granted that permission on his behalf, so by his account he told Yankovic NO and was thus given the impression he deliberately disregarded his wishes. I think anyone in that position is WELL within their rights to reject, and I absolutely adore Weird Al but I understand if someone said no and he did it anyway that person might be miffed.

“I think he just didn’t want to be made light of,” Rasheed said. To Coolio, his collaborators explained, “Gangsta’s Paradise” spoke to the real hardships and fears around street life in a way that seemed to resonate with people from different walks of life.

“A lot of people say it saved them from whatever demons they were dealing with, that they listened to the song and it helped them carry on,” Coolio said in the Rolling Stone oral history.

“I let that go so long ago,” Coolio told Vice in 2014. “Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong.” He added, “I listened to it a couple years after that and it’s actually funny,” adding an expletive.

(copied from a NYtimes article before their piece of crap website paywalled me out because my dumb broken mouse closed the tab by accident, eff them!)

And here's an interview with everyone involved.

Amelius, thank you for refreshing my memory. I actually remember a lot of that. The jazz station probably credits Stevie Wonder because of the music not the words.

I know that song got really big because it was on the soundtrack to the now-nearly-forgotten movie “Dangerous Minds” (and by extension the even-more-forgotten-about short-lived TV show). I'll bet the recent resurgence is because it was poorly used in the first trailer for the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

To be fair the song has had a lot of use in film and television over the years. It's become one of those songs that gets everywhere in a way the Stevie Wonder original didn't. Personally I prefer Coolio's take in it, but that is the version I heard first. Much in the way many covers become the preferred version over originals with the young audience of the day. That said I can't imagine Madonna's version of American our is anyone's favourite.

Genejoke wrote:
Much in the way many covers become the preferred version over originals with the young audience of the day.

I can attest to this . . . no disrespect to The Monkees, but man, Smash Mouth's cover of “I'm a Believer” is kickin'! Also, I had no idea that Linda Ronstadt's “You're No Good” or Counting Crows' “Big Yellow Taxi” were cover tune, because I had never heard the original versions of either of those songs until I was an adult.

I also remember in 2001-2002, Shaggy's version of “Angel of the Morning” was one of the biggest songs on the radio, we'd hear it on the bus almost every single day after school, and all the kids would be singing it . . . little did any of them know that it was a cover of a song from the 60s . . . not that they cared, lol.

elektro wrote:
I know that song got really big because it was on the soundtrack to the now-nearly-forgotten movie “Dangerous Minds” (and by extension the even-more-forgotten-about short-lived TV show). I'll bet the recent resurgence is because it was poorly used in the first trailer for the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

Nah, the recent resurgence is that Coolio died like last week.

100%.He has walked through the valley of the shadow and ascended to the great gangster's paradise in the sky - probably to his own soundtrack. I can't tell from this thread if people were aware of that or not!

Amelius wrote:

elektro wrote:
I know that song got really big because it was on the soundtrack to the now-nearly-forgotten movie “Dangerous Minds” (and by extension the even-more-forgotten-about short-lived TV show). I'll bet the recent resurgence is because it was poorly used in the first trailer for the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

Nah, the recent resurgence is that Coolio died like last week.

I meant before he died.

I meant before he died.

I stand corrected then, I had not realized there was much of a resurgence before that! I don't listen to radio and lingering plague has put me off any inclination to enter into enclosed spaces where I might hear it. I usually get my latest and greatest (or oldest and GOAT-est) filtered through whatever memes are coming out about it. Maybe all the buzz was on the other social media sites I tend to avoid? Because I saw a lot of posts about Sonic but nobody mentioning GP.

But if you say it is so I will take your word for it, and my apologies for the assumption!

This isn't about Coolio, sorry.
I hate windows 10 OMG !!!!
I lost all of my photoshop presets: gradient maps and actions because windows decided to update and for some reason that reset my copy of PS back to factory default.
Now I have to redo EVERYTHING

My pc is updating Windows 10 as we speak. Please pray for me.

Good luck dude

I thought it killed my machine. It wouldn't start afterward and just had a white bar at the top of the screen. finally I tried messing around in the BIOS and changed the boot order and somehow it's working again. but it fried my PS6

lothar wrote:
This isn't about Coolio, sorry.
I hate windows 10 OMG !!!!
I lost all of my photoshop presets: gradient maps and actions because windows decided to update and for some reason that reset my copy of PS back to factory default.
Now I have to redo EVERYTHING

RIP, I frickin hate when that happens. I lost a crapton of really important actions I had built up for years because photoshop froze and got force-closed and I had to remember a 5 step process I had for a specific effect all over again. The only reason I didn't lose my brushes was because it had a dedicated folder from having been imported from a previous computer.

You should check the temps and see if it can be recovered:

C:\Users\username\appData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop ???\Adobe Photoshop ??? Settings\Actions Palette.psp

Replace your computer name where it says username of course.

I learned the hard lesson before that the only guarantee to not lose your stuff is to save all this crap to a dedicated folder, I migrated a lot of custom brush and swatch files from Photoshop 7 to CS5 this way (I don't use the cloud for these exact reasons– my work computer isn't online so I can use old programs and Adobe can't do a frickin' thing about it.)

Thanks Amelius, I found it but the time stamp is about an hour ago; the last time I rebooted. so I'm guessing it's after I started remaking them. Totally a a pain to try and remember the order of things i've been hitting a single button for for years. Things like knocking out the blue pencil marks or setting up the line art for color fills. it's kinda cool though.I remade most of the actions already. I think I streamlined things a little. I've only ever been using Photoshop 6 for 20+ years. I don't see any reason to upgrade.

Would you guys believe me if I said I'm still happily using Windows 7?

For real: I'm holding onto this thing for as long as I possibly can, because I literally have heard nothing positive about 8 or 10 whatsoever. I'm able to get by by using older versions of certain Adobe programs, such as Premiere Pro, and even Fireworks (which I always prefered over Photoshop anyway).

I am mindful to backup the things I create though, because I've lost too many of such in the past for one reason or another, whether it's because of an OS upgrade that erased my files, or leaving a laptop plugged in (directly into a wall outlet) during a lightning storm, so in the event that I do eventually have to upgrade (or even purchase an entirely new and updated computer altogether, since my current one is 10 years old), I shouldn't lose anything too important.

But yeah, for now, I'm still very happy with using 7 . . . heck, I held onto XP for as long as I could before I got my current computer with 7 - never had the displeasure of having to use the glitchy, buggy, and ugly Vista that nobody liked.

You know, now that I think about it, it seems like the only versions of Windows that anybody ever liked were 98 (I loved how customizable it was), XP, and 7.

And people wonder why I don't create custom tools in Photoshop. Not since the “clicks of death” sounded on my portable hard drive and I lost all my custom files, collected art and the then currently updating webcomic.

It's archived here and the incident immortalized. Had to give up a whole sequence and just have a blank page explaining what happened on the missing pages.

Damn that hurt.

Ouch, that sucks.

And I'm still running windows 7 on my notebook. I used to xp up until maybe 5 years ago. But you're right 98 was the best. You could even customize the windows loading screen. It was a good year and a good oS

I think I got through the update in one piece, but I've never used photoshop. I went straight from XP to windows 10 and still miss it. Everything you needed and nothing you didn't. You could even drag folders into whatever order you wanted them, which doesn't seem like it would be such a hard thing to achieve.

Just popping in to say I'm super pumped because finally, FINALLY, WM has a new overall cover :D It took me ages to get around to making it but it's here now and I got to tell someone. XDXD

That looks absolutely cracking Tantz! The dramatic lighting really sets the tone, great job.