Rap Gets Soft (Really)

‘Excuse me, are you Coolio?”

A young girl, the junior-high equivalent of the teen queen portrayed by Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless,” thinks she recognizes the man with the distinctive spiked braids and easygoing demeanor as the guy she’s seen countless times on MTV.

She stands next to him eagerly until he replies that he indeed is the hard-core rapper whose “Gangsta’s Paradise” was the biggest single record of 1995, selling an estimated 2.5 million copies. Her nearby gal-pals watch, giggling nervously, as she asks for an autograph.

“Do you have a pen?” Coolio, 32, asks, nonchalantly, as he stands this Saturday afternoon at La Cienega and Third, across from the Beverly Center. Handed one, he signs “Coolio 96,” underlining his name before handing the sheet of paper to the excited fan. He then nods matter-of-factly and walks to the building on Third Street that houses his management company, Crowbar.

There’s a reason why that scene is remarkable.

There was a time, as recent as the early ‘90s, when the only rappers that “Clueless”-types might recognize, much less feel safe to approach, would be the fluffy, G-rated performers such as Hammer, Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince and Vanilla Ice.

But that’s changed dramatically today, when the “G” in G-rated stands for “gangsta.”

While many politicians and parent groups still attack hard-core rappers as thugs who poison the minds of impressionable youths, rap is proving that it does not express just angry, violent sentiments. Like all vital art forms, even the hardest segment of rap has evolved musically and thematically.

Several of the most successful rap singles of recent years have begun to demonstrate a more sensitive side. In response, the music community has started viewing rappers with increasing respect--a point that will be underscored at Wednesday’s Grammy Awards ceremony.

Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” the key track on the smash “Dangerous Minds” soundtrack album, is the first hard-core rap single ever nominated for record of the year. It will compete against more conventional mainstream fare such as Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” and the Mariah Carey duet with Boyz II Men on “One Sweet Day.”

In addition, 2Pac, whose “Dear Mama” is one of the most tender pop hits in years, is nominated for two Grammys: best rap album and best rap solo performance (“Dear Mama” competes against “Gangsta’s Paradise” in the latter).

Other songs--from Warren G’s “Regulate” to 2Pac’s recent “California Love”--also show just how much gangsta rap has changed. Both songs illustrate how rappers have been able to downplay profanity and use smoother beats and still get their point across in ways that don’t destroy their credibility.

“If you spit out, ‘I’ll kill anyone’ all the time, you’ll soon become a caricature, and after a while you’re not going to be creditable as an artist,” says Russell Simmons, the CEO of Def Jam Recordings and the New York businessman who helped launch rap as a commercial force.

“Coolio comes from the gangster’s side that’s more sensitive. He doesn’t have to tell you, ‘I’m a murderer,’ 100 times to prove that he’s tough. He’s an artist who wants to focus sometimes on the sad reality of living in a gangsta’s paradise, but also wants to focus on having a good time.”

The melancholy “Gangsta’s Paradise,” which borrows liberally from Stevie Wonder’s 1976 composition “Pastime Paradise,” asks the question:

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Tell me why are we so blind to see

That the ones we hurt are you and me?

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“My song is depressing as hell,” Coolio says. “I had no idea that it would be so successful. It shows you what’s on the mind of people in the world today. They have no hope, and they found hope in that song. It’s a spiritual, straight-up. That’s why people’s grandmothers can relate to it. Everybody likes spirituals.”

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When gangsta rap first became part of the pop consciousness in the late-’80s through such volatile albums as N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” and Boogie Down Productions’ “Criminal Minded,” there was little room for sensitivity.

Unlike the party-minded nature of the rap hits of the early and middle ‘80s, N.W.A. in Los Angeles, Boogie Down Productions in New York and the Geto Boys in Houston used music to convey the bitter alienation of street life. The images were shocking--tales of drive-by shootings, police hostility and the fruits of the criminal life.

This music, which was also widely criticized for misogynistic tendencies, was so startling that many observers, especially parents, never saw past the nihilism. Baby boomers, who in their youth had celebrated rebellion and anti-authority attitudes, were frankly scared when their teenagers began coming home with baggy pants, baseball caps turned backward and albums whose music and covers were filled with violent, terrifying themes.

In many ways, it was a throwback to the ‘50s, when many white parents were uneasy about the rise of such raucous black musicians as Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley. At that time, moms and dads seemed relieved to embrace Pat Boone and, later, Elvis Presley, even if they were singing the same songs.

Similarly, parents in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s must have sighed with relief when Boone’s equivalents, Hammer and Vanilla Ice, became rap superstars--if only briefly.

Just as they did in the ‘50s, teenagers eventually went for the pure goods and sought out the hard-core rappers such as Ice Cube, Ice-T and Cypress Hill.

Some observers still see rap in that old light.

Yet the reality is that the rappers--perhaps reflecting some of the changes in their lives and the maturation of their art--began in the early ‘90s to find room for poignancy in their music. This isn’t to be confused with softness, because the music does not deny the continued difficulties of life on the streets. It’s just that some rappers proved that there was heart behind the mask of indifference they had previously worn.

Two records were particularly influential in broadening the themes of hard-core rap--and in showing that audiences would respond to such themes: KRS-One’s 1990 “Love’s Gonna Get ‘Cha (Material Love),” which spoke of the futility of getting caught up in the drug-selling lifestyle, and Ice Cube’s 1991 “Dead Homiez,” which spoke about the heartbreak of losing close friends to senseless violence.

Other records that also contributed to the movement: the Geto Boys’ haunting “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” in 1991 and Dr. Dre’s “Little Ghetto Boy” the next year.

While those records remained mostly underground favorites, the commercial breakthrough was Ice Cube’s lighthearted “It’s a Good Day,” which spoke about 24 hours in the hood during which there are no killings. The single went to the national Top 20 in 1993.

Soon after, Scarface--a member of the notorious Geto Boys--had a national hit with “I’ve Never Seen a Man Cry.” Coolio also had his own breakthrough hit, “Fantastic Voyage,” an upbeat party song in which he proclaimed “Ain’t no Bloodin’ / Ain’t no Crippin’ / Ain’t nobody in the place set-trippin’.”

It was “Fantastic Voyage” that caught the ear of Kathy Nelson, then an MCA Records executive (she’s now at Disney) who was putting together the music for the soundtrack for “Dangerous Minds,” a film about a tough-as-nails former Marine (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) teaching English in a troubled inner-city high school.

“I thought he was an amazing artist,” Nelson says about Coolio. “For the soundtrack, I needed someone who could make a mainstream record, with no worry about parental [warning] stickers, but still have edge . . . someone who could walk that line.”

Coolio didn’t have to watch many clips from the movie to write “Gangsta’s Paradise.” He could just draw on the events of his own life.

Born Artis Ivey on Aug. 1, 1963, in South-Central Los Angeles, Coolio was a sensitive child who loved to read, and found himself constantly being picked on because of his small stature.

“I was in all of these special classes for gifted students and they used to take us to the museum,” he remembers proudly, sitting on a desk in the tiny management office, where he oversees the careers of such artists as the 40 Thievez, Ras Kass and Mailika. The room is a mess of papers, unopened fan mail, posters and a monthly planner filled with activities.

But things started getting less idyllic when Coolio got into Ralph Bunche Junior High School.

“By eighth grade, I started messing up,” he says. Sick of being harassed by the bigger kids, he decided to fight back to the point where fighting became a preoccupation.

“I was tired of playing the victim, so I started carrying knives to school and playing the crazy role . . . hitting people in the head with bottles, doing things to gain respect in the street.”

This direction led to him a gang--in his case, the Crips.

Coolio also began having problems at home. By age 11, his parents had split apart, leaving the youngster and his older sister living with their mother. When his mother lost her job, Coolio learned about hunger for the first time. He turned to shoplifting at markets and then breaking into cars and homes for money.

As he got older, the gang situation started getting more violent, so he steered away from it.

“I was running with these cats that were straight killers,” he says without a trace of braggadocio. “I saw them rob this guy on the street, and beat him to death with a hammer. . . .”

He breaks off. The memory of that incident when he was 17 still unnerves him.

“I saw that, and said to myself, ‘This ain’t me. This is not the type of person I am.’ ”

But there was still trouble ahead, including a 10-month stint in the California Youth Authority camp for a robbery, which he claims he didn’t commit, and eventually serious crack addiction that left him on the edge of despair.

“One day I walked past the mirror and it was like, ‘Damn, who is that?’ It freaked me out,” he recalls. “So I talked myself out of smoking.”

To redirect his life, he moved in his early 20s to San Jose and worked for two years as a firefighter with forestry and conservation agencies.

But his real goal by this time was rap, which he had loved since the music’s beginnings. He had rapped in various local groups in the early ‘80s, and eventually joined WC & the MADD Circle, which released an album in 1991 on Priority Records.

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His big break came in 1993 when he brought a demo tape to Paul Stewart, a manager who discovered such other Los Angeles rap artists as Warren G and House of Pain.

“Coolio came to me with a demo and I really liked the song,” Stewart says in a separate interview. “I looked at him more as a West Coast street artist who didn’t have any pretensions. He could talk about being on a welfare line or smoking crack without any shame. He had a very intense life.”

Stewart passed the demo on to Tommy Boy Records, which signed him. His first album, titled “To Catch a Thief,” was released in July, 1994 and became a national hit, thanks to heavy MTV exposure for the video for “Fantastic Voyage.”

Coolio (he got the stage name when a friend saw him fooling around with an acoustic guitar and asked him, “Who do you think you are: Coolio Iglesias?”) became an instant hit, thanks to his distinctive appearance and clever raps.

“Everybody loves him,” Stewart says. “It isn’t just because he is so crazy looking, but because he seems approachable. He’s a positive person. When people hear him speak, they can see he is articulate. Little kids meet him and act like he’s their best friend. He’s an underdog.”

About his mainstream success and the Grammy nominations, Coolio says, “It’s funny, but being on dope actually made me a better person.”

He pauses and reflects on the words--as if surprised by his own statement.

“It makes you realize that the next day isn’t promised,” he continues finally. “You have to be lucky and you have to be determined. I conquered that, and since I conquered that I know that my life will never be that messed up again. I’ve been at the bottom and as long as I never get that low again, my life can never be bad. I know that I can do anything.”

Coolio isn’t just impressing fans. Critics, too, praise him. Indeed, “Gangsta’s Paradise” was voted the record of the year in a Village Voice survey of more than 300 pop critics from around the country.

“All my life, I thought I was gonna be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a pilot, something where I could put my intelligence to good use,” Coolio says. “I had some detours, but as a rapper I ended up becoming something better than that. A doctor touches lives, and saves some, but as a rapper I’m able to touch and influence millions.”

Despite the increasing diversity and feeling of hard-core rap, the debate over rap as a social influence continues.

C. Delores Tucker, chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women, doesn’t see any positive side of hard-core rap.

“You can’t mix apples and oranges,” she said when asked about the issue. “Many people have said, ‘Well this album or that album has a wonderful song,’ but you still have all that gangster mess around it. Porno rap. That’s what I call it and . . . it shouldn’t be distributed to children. It’s teaching people around the world that our black men are gangstas and thugs, robbers and rapists. Coolio’s record [and] his look is now the image of black males around the world.”

What image would she rather black males have?

“The same kind any other people would want projected,” she replied. “We don’t need gangsters because people are already used to stereotypical images about black people. We’ve been jokesters and maids, slaves, even Amos and Andy. I think we should show more of what we’ve endured, and what we have accomplished despite the adversity we’ve had to overcome.”

But Coolio sees his music as proof of overcoming adversity.

“I can do anything I want,” he says. “Coolio is not a gangster or a political rapper. The Coolio I created can talk about love, about drugs, about police brutality. No one expects me to say this or that--in fact, they don’t know what the hell I’ll say next. That’s one of the few luxuries I have as an artist.”

As a longtime observer of the scene, Def Jam’s Russell Simmons feels the reason hard-core rap has prospered is that it gives people who are historically voiceless in American society the opportunity to put their lives in perspective.

“The thing that has made rap last is its honesty,” he said in a separate interview. “The whole culture revolves around the concept of ‘keeping it real,’ and keeping it real, as far as I’m concerned, is ‘Gangsta’s Paradise,’ keeping it real is ‘Dear Mama’--songs that deal with that type of subject matter.”