Coolio’s posthumous album includes guest appearances from Naughty By Nature’s Treach, Da Lench Mob’s J-Dee and Ras Kass on a project that was not intended to be the rapper’s last.
Titled Long Live Coolio, the forthcoming LP is a celebration of the Grammy award-winning MC, best known for his ’90s classics Gangsta’s Paradise and Fantastic Voyage.
His representatives have shared the 11-song track list and who will be heard on the album.
A Star Is Born, the latest track from the release — a collaboration between Naughty By Nature’s Treach, MC Shan and Coolio’s long time producer/collaborator DJ Wino — premiered on Friday.
The track doubles as a history lesson in Coolio’s path to superstardom.
Treach, who has a large portrait tattoo of Coolio on his chest, said: “When I heard Coolio’s verse, I’m like, ‘Yo, it feels like the homie is still here’.
“How do we want people to think of him? We just want them to always think of him. That’s what it’s about — keeping your homies’ names in the streets.
“Tupac just got a star in Hollywood. We don’t just say it when our brothers are here. We say it until we meet up with them again.”
In A Star Is Born, Coolio raps: “Went from Old Man to Boo Daddy to Coolio. At the age of 18 I hit the studio KDAY I’m on radio.”
DJ Wino said: “Coolio told his story in the second verse. This song was not meant to be posthumous.”
Coolio died in September 2022.
The Los Angeles County coroner’s office determined that his death was from the effects of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine and ruled it an accident.
In March 2023, Coolio’s estate said the hip-hop legend was working on an album in the days leading up to his death.
DJ Wino says about 75% of the album was completed at the time he died.
“He laid it out there for us,” he said of finishing Long Live Coolio.
“It was up to us to come through and like good little foot soldiers we followed up.”
Coolio won a Grammy for best solo rap performance for Gangsta’s Paradise, the 1995 hit from the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film Dangerous Minds that sampled Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song Pastime Paradise and was played constantly on MTV.
The song hit one billion views on YouTube in 2022.
The rapper had subsequent hits with Fantastic Voyage in 1994, 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New) in 1996 and 1997’s C U When U Get There.
His career album sales totalled 4.8 million, with 978 million on-demand streams of his songs, according to Luminate.
He was nominated for six Grammys overall.
The Long Live Coolio track list is:
1. Shine On Me
2. Got That
3. Notice Me (feat Ras Kass)
4. Fast Pace (feat Kid Frost)
5. I’m Wit That BS (feat J-Dee from Da Lench Mob)
6. TAG You It (feat Too Short)
7. A Star Is Born (feat Treach from Naughty By Nature)
8. Belly Of The Beast (feat Cejaz Negraz)
9. Snitch’N
10. Stand Up Beat It Hit It (feat Jay Chris)
11. R Thentic (feat Kurupt & Chill)