Amish Paradise

Why Did ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic And Coolio Have Beef?

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Weird Al Yankovic 2021
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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.

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.

‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Uses A Meaningful Photo To Honor Coolio, The Rap Icon Who Inspired ‘Amish Paradise,’ After His Death

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Weird Al Yankovic Amish Paradise video
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Yesterday, the world learned that Coolio, the legendary rapper behind “Gangsta’s Paradise,” died at 59 years old. Reactions have since poured out, including a meaningful one from “Weird Al” Yankovic. He shared a photo of Coolio and himself (more on the picture in a bit) and wrote simply, “RIP Coolio.”

Coolio is of course a major part of Yankovic’s legacy thanks to the latter’s “Amish Paradise.” The song, a parody of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” is one of Yankovic’s biggest hits: It’s his most-streamed song on Spotify and one of a handful of Yankovic songs to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The rapper was initially not pleased with Yankovic’s parody but later expressed regret over his response to it on multiple occasions. In a 2011 interview, for example, he said, “I sat down, and I really thought it out. I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I was like, ‘Coolio, who the f*ck do you think you are? He did Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson didn’t get mad..’ […] I’ve since apologized to him. Again, that was so stupid. […] That was a stupid thing for me to do. That was one of the dumbest things I did in my career.”

As for the photo Yankovic chose to share, it’s a significant one. The pic shows the two hugging at the XM Satellite booth at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As Vulture notes, this occasion marked the pair’s public reconciliation after years of tension between them due to “Amish Paradise.” Yankovic later said of the encounter, “I don’t remember what we said to each other exactly, but it was all very friendly and after a minute, he was gone. I turned to the next person in line and said, ‘Did that really just happen?’”

Revisit our 2016 interview with Coolio here.