Coolio, best known for his 1995 hit song “Gangsta’s Paradise,” died at age 59 earlier this week. Following the news, many in the music industry posted tributes to the late rapper. However, one post caught fans’ attention, from none other than “Weird Al” Yankovic — who Coolio had a documented beef with in the ’90s.
RIP Coolio pic.twitter.com/Z53f3n6HDU
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) September 29, 2022
The tension between the two started after Yankovic wanted to parody Coolio’s song, which eventually was released as 1996’s “Amish Paradise.” Coolio originally denied Yankovic’s request for the song, but given fair use laws, he couldn’t stop a parody from happening. Thus, the beef began. Coolio even threw in a line about Yankovic in his song “Throwdown 2000,” which appeared to be a diss.
By some point around the 2000s, Coolio and Yankovic had hung out and eventually put their drama aside. Yankovic even wanted the rapper to appear in his 2006 movie, Al’s Brain, but Coolio declined due to the financial aspect of the deal. Prior to his passing, he even noted that he found Yankovic (and the parody of his song) hilarious.
“Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong,” Coolio told Vice in 2014. “Y’all remember that, everybody out there who reads this sh*t. Real men and real people should be able to admit when they’re wrong and I was wrong, bro. Come on, who the f*ck 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 sh*t and being stupid and I was wrong and I should’ve embraced that sh*t and went with it,” he continued. “I listened to it a couple years after that and it’s actually funny as sh*t. 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. 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.”
Despite their beef history, Coolio and Yankovic still maintained a clear respect for one another.