Grammy-Winning Rapper Coolio Dies At 59

Rapper Coolio, a Grammy winner best known for the songs Gangsta's Paradise and Fantastic Voyage, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 59, according to his manager. Longtime manager Jarez Posey confirmed to The Associated Press that Coolio passed away at a friend's house in Los Angeles. The reason wasn't intuitively clear. Gangsta's Paradise, a 1995 hit from the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer movie Dangerous Minds that sampled Stevie Wonder's 1976 song Pastime Paradise and was widely played on MTV, won Coolio a Grammy for best solo rap performance.

The Grammy and the height of his fame occurred in 1996, during a bitter conflict between the two coasts' hip-hop scenes that would soon claim the lives of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious BIG. Coolio generally avoided being caught up in the fighting. He said from the stage as he took the prize,  “I'd like to claim this Grammy on behalf of the whole hip-hop nation, West Coast, East Coast, and worldwide, united we stand, divided we fall,”

Coolio went to Compton, California after being born Artis Leon Ivey Jr. in Monessen, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh. When he was a teenager, his mother sent him to Northern California for a while because she thought the city was too unsafe. In interviews, he stated that he began rapping at the age of 15, and by the time he was 18, he knew it was what he wanted to do with his life. However, he decided to attend community college, work as a volunteer firefighter, and work in airport security first, all before dedicating himself fully to the hip-hop scene.