Hard to believe it’s been 30 years since Coolio’s instant classic “Gangsta’s Paradise” entered our aural lexicon in August 1995—but here we are in the here and now, where the eternally classic g-funk/rap song that has over (yes) 3 billion multi-platform streams (and counting) has recently been re-released anew as both a blue-vinyl 45 and in a heavenly immersive Dolby Atmos mix.
To celebrate this wholly sacred pearl anniversary, Tommy Boy recently dropped an all-new “Gangsta’s Paradise (Feat. L.V.)” b/w “Gangsta’s Paradise (Instrumental)” 45 on blue vinyl that you can order here for just $15.98, in addition to a just-dropped Atmos mix that expands upon the song’s stereo template that was so expertly concocted by producer Doug Rasheed (Barry White, Whitney Houston, Chaka Khan, LL Cool J) all those years ago, and now uplifted into its truly renewed immersive glory. Even if you can only access “Paradise” in 360 via, say, AirPod Pros, you’ll marvel at the ether-high placements for each pass of L.V.’s massively layered vocal hook and angelic choir bed (it’s all him!), plus you’ll dig how cleverly Coolio’s world-wearily rapped verses and that impeccable synth line Rasheed expanded upon slither across the soundstage when warranted. Interestingly, both of those Atmos elements are essentially mirrored by the panning searchlight effect that swings back and forth on the track’s Apple Music screen for its full 4:01 duration.
Fact is, Rasheed and featured vocalist/hookmeister nonpareil L.V. were working on the bedtrack together well before the up-and-coming rapper Coolio entered the production picture. Rasheed had initially sampled “Pastime Paradise” from Stevie Wonder’s September 1976 2LP Tamla masterpiece Songs in the Key of Life to set the table. “Paradise” (LP1, Side Two, Track 3) is a well-acknowledged mid-’70s funk classic upon which Wonder deployed a Yamaha GX-1 synth to emulate a full string section, in addition to layering an angelic West Angeles Church of God gospel choir along with a Hare Krishna chanting group for the song’s fully fulfilling finale. Springboarding from that template, Rasheed performed and re-recorded the balance of the song’s musical elements and layers himself, one by one—and when he played back the initial results for L.V., the South Central Cartel vocalist made history in the moment by coming up with the title phrase “Gangsta’s Paradise” on the spot.
It took a while before Wonder himself agreed to let them use/sample his song—among other things, he had objected to the profanity that was ultimately excised from the final track—and soon enough, a true crossover classic was born. “I’ve met Stevie Wonder, and I talked to him about it,” Rasheed confirms. “I told him I appreciated him letting us use the sample, and I thanked him for that. What’s also interesting is, my mom used to work for Stevie Wonder, and when I told him who my mom was, he kind of bugged out, like, ‘What’?” As Rasheed smiles at the recollection and connection, L.V. chimes in to add, “When I met Stevie Wonder and told him I was the one singing on the song, he just went ‘Man, you did a great job on that song.’ I had never met Stevie Wonder before that, and I was just excited to be in the same room with him, bro.” (Confirmation to the peace of the world, indeed.)
On a recent Zoom call—their first ever joint interview—“Paradise” producer Doug Rasheed and featured vocalist and hookmaker L.V. tell me how they created the bedtrack that Coolio added his heartfelt lyrics into, what the analog recording reveals that digital doesn’t, and why “Paradise” will endure in perpetuity. Tell me why are we so blind to see / That the ones we hurt are you and me. . .
Mike Mettler: Doug, when you were doing the original mix for “Gangsta’s Paradise,” did you have a specific placement ideas like, “I want Coolio to be here when he comes in, L.V. has to be here, and the choir has to be here”? How did you layer it?
Rasheed: Well, we definitely wanted to place things—and I always do, in my mixes—in various areas with the panning and spatial placements. This thing was done on 2-inch analog, so I’m excited to hear what it’s gonna sound like on the 45. I’m assuming they’re probably gonna do some remastering with it. From my understanding, they sent the original actual master overseas for something back in the day, and it never came back, you know?
Mettler: Yeah, I heard it, uh, “disappeared.”
Rasheed: (nodding) It disappeared. Yeah, I heard that. I heard that. But I have the DATs and stuff, and they have DATs—and hopefully they were able to capture some of that original warmth.
Mettler: I can give you a little bit of a spoiler by saying I think you’ll be pleased once you get to spin that new 45 on your turntable. Now, I was lucky enough to talk to Coolio about it way back in the day really early on, and I got his account of just how deeply he felt what he was doing. And I’m sure you caught that level of, I’m gonna call it, desperation in his voice. I mean, that’s from life experience, right? You could feel that as a producer in the room—like, “he’s really giving me his life here,” right?
Rasheed: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I heard that. Even when we recorded the demo before we actually went in the studio, I was feeling it. The way he delivered those lyrics—and, of course, there’s L.V. He was on the hook before Coolio got involved. We were working on the song for L.V. because he was trying to put together a demo to try to get a deal. Coolio was already signed with Tommy Boy, and Coolio heard us working on it.
When he wrote it and did the demo, I was blown away. I knew it was something special in the way he delivered it—and it was different than what I had heard from him before. He had done a lot of upbeat music, like “Fantastic Voyage” [Coolio’s hit No.3 single, from March 1994], and this was really heavy. It was deep and it was heavy, and I think there was a lot of pain behind his voice, in the delivery of it. [Sadly, Coolio passed away at age 59 in 2022.]
Mettler: Pain is a good word for what we’re hearing from him there, I agree. Getting back to that hook from L.V.—who’ll be joining us on the call here in just a minute—he came up with the phrase “Gangsta’s Paradise” himself in the moment, right?
Rasheed: Yeah. What happened was, he came in, and we were gonna work on some music. I played him the track, and he liked it. Then I said, “Hey, you know where this came from?” And I played him the Stevie Wonder version. He heard the hook on “Pastime Paradise,” and he was like (exclaims), “Whoa!” He started singing—and instantly, he started singing the hook, and he just automatically put “Gangsta’s” in place of “Pastime”—and we knew we had something with that.
Mettler: Wow. So that’s literally the first pass. That was the first word that came to his mind. There wasn’t any other word there—just “Gangsta’s”—and you probably had chills in the moment, like, “That’s perfect.”
Rasheed: Yeah. Oh, look—he’s calling me right now.
Mettler: Perfect timing! Let’s ask him once he gets on the line. [Rasheed connects L.V. into the Zoom call through his phone.]
L.V.: Hello? Ok, I can hear you now.
Mettler: Great. Well, Doug and I were just talking about how you guys were in the studio working together—and then he played Stevie Wonder’s track for you, and you literally came up with the phrase, “Gangsta’s Paradise” in the moment, right? Is that correct?
L.V.: Yeah. Correct!
Rasheed: Yep. Instant.
Mettler: So that’s the first thing that came to your mind. It just hit you right away, huh?
L.V.: Yeah, it just hit me right off the bat of the head! (laughter all around) And I did that whole choir—the choir that you hear, from the sopranos on down to first, second tenor, that’s all me.
Rasheed: That’s all L.V. Sounds like a big choir.
Mettler: Wow. That’s amazing. How many vocal tracks did you layer there?
L.V.: We laid tracks, for the choir. We laid tracks—and I doubled each track.
Rasheed: Yeah, we did three-part harmony. Basically, what I did was—’cause I had the notes already in my head—I sang the notes to ’em. I couldn’t even hold the note long enough. With the wind that L.V. had to have to sing that was just amazing. I couldn’t do it—and he just knocked it out with no sweat. He knocked them things out.
But the way we made it to sound like a really big choir—we took the demo choir from the home studio, and blended it with the recording we did at Larrabee Studios [in Los Angeles]. Remember how we did that, L.V.? We put ’em together, and all of a sudden it just turned into a massive choir.
L.V.: Yep. Turned into a big choir.
Rasheed: Yes.
Mettler: So, L.V., did you know that you wanted it to be a choir right away, or did both you and Doug have the same thought about it in the moment?
L.V.: Yeah, we had the same thought—but I knew it had to sound like a choir. It couldn’t just sound like one person doing it. And, no disrespect to Coolio, but me and Doug Rasheed did that song first.
Rasheed: Yes, we did. That’s right.
L.V.: I told Doug, “We need a rapper on this song.” What I’d done was, I first talked to my friend Prodeje from the South Central Cartel, and he told me, “Nah man, you should do this by yourself.” I said, “No, it needs a rapper on it.” He said, “Well, I’m not gonna get on it, ’cause I think you should do it by yourself.” So, I had the thought to get Coolio on the song—and I actually had to wait for that man to get on the song.
Rasheed: (laughs) Yeah, it took like two weeks to get him on it. (more laughter)
L.V.: Before that, it was only Doug and me on that song, bro.
Rasheed: This is true. I mean, Coolio, he wrote his lyrics and stuff, but when he did come by and he finally did listen to it, he liked it. He wanted it, and he had a record deal. They were working on his new album—and me and L.V., we made a business decision right there on the spot: “Let’s do it on him.” It took him a couple of weeks, but he wrote them lyrics. And, you know, the rest is history.
Mettler: L.V., earlier, you were telling us how important soul music is to you, and how it’s made an impression on your own soul. That makes me think about the level of emotion I’m hearing each time you sing both the hook and then the “why can’t we” section. I mean, you’re putting your entire life in there, right? That’s your own life experience that we’re hearing.
L.V.: Basically, yeah. That was my life experience from being where I’m from—from my neighborhood, and being shot, and all those political senses of how it ain’t about we the people, it’s about we the politicians—all of that.
Mettler: Besides the immersive Atmos mix, I’m glad we get to hear “Gangsta’s Paradise” on a 45. That’s a new experience for some of the kids out there.
L.V.: For kids, it’s a whole new thing, yeah—but for us, it’s forever. I just think that if the kids listen to it on vinyl, they’ll learn to appreciate the music more too. That’s much better than listening on earbuds or a phone. It’s different. It’s just different, man.
Rasheed: The kids will get a taste of the warmth of that vinyl we grew up on. And when you have the analog, that’s going to include your overtones, which you don’t get with the digital. Digital is just basically a copy of the sound, so you don’t have any overtones. It can sound really crispy and sharp, which I think is a good sound too. I don’t have any problem with it, but that analog—you can’t beat it, man, because of that warmth, and with the overtones in there.
In fact, right when we did the choir—when we stacked the clean choir that we recorded at Larrabee, and then we stacked the demo on top of it from the house, it created overtones that actually added notes. There’s one particular note that’s really high on top of the choir that was not there. And it is in the song. You can hear it clear as day. That’s the beauty of overtones.
Mettler: And that’s a great thing. Even the feel of the cowbell that’s right at the beginning—is that something that you recorded, or sampled?
Rasheed: That’s actually from the [“Pastime Paradise”] sample. When you hear that cowbell, what I did was, I took a four-bar loop from the intro of the song. It includes those percussions, and pretty much just plays throughout the song. And then, everything else I built around the sample.
Mettler: And we hear that, because we get a real human feel there.
Rasheed: Yeah, you feel it because it’s being played. I mean, I played all of the instruments live as well. I played the bass line live on the bass, and I layered that with a synth bass to give it some bottom roundings. Even those big strings—I played them live, right on down the track. The only thing that’s programmed are the drums. Everything else, I actually played.
Mettler: We can totally feel it. Ok, L.V., now that it’s 30 years later, did you actually think this song would be forever? Did you know in the moment that “Gangsta’s Paradise” was that special?
L.V.: (laughs heartily) Never! I didn’t know it’s gonna be forever.
Rasheed: I didn’t know. I mean, I thought I knew we had something special. I knew we did. My father happened to be in the studio when we were recording, and I remember I looked across the room, and he gave me a look. And he said (adopts lower vocal tone), “This is a hit.” He mouthed it. “This is a hit.” And he’s good—he’s a musician. I thought we had a hit, a possible hit, but I couldn’t tell.
L.V.: I didn’t think it was no hit. I just knew it was a good record. Once we had Stevie Wonder in on the song, it became a hit also.
Rasheed: Yeah, but a classic like this, with the beans and the streams, and still 30 years later—no, no way.
Mettler: There’s no dividing line for this song. It’s just a good song, period. Everybody loves it.
Rasheed: You got that—the young and the old, yeah. (laughs) That’s right.
Mettler: So what’s the secret sauce?
L.V.: Really, I don’t know what the secret sauce is. Whatever it was, I thank God that it happened, because, like you said, it’s a good song. It’s a song that resonates throughout the world, because the world has different neighborhoods that go through the same thing I went through in my neighborhood. And like I said, when I was singing, I was singing from the heart, and from the soul. So, they felt it.
Rasheed: Now, I have a theory on that question. Two things. Number one, we already talked about Coolio’s delivery. It was really great. It had the emotion in it—the pain. And L.V. had the emotion and the pain in it too. His voice is just phenomenal. He sounds like an instrument. It’s powerful.
But I think it also offered a safe glimpse into the hood, for people of all walks of life. It didn’t matter who they were—they could safely listen to it. It didn’t feel too rough for them. I just think that “Gangsta’s Paradise” had a kind of a crossover feel to it—the feel of the music, and the production style. It was safe for everybody to listen to. And when you listened to it, you got a glimpse into the hoods—any hood—and that lifestyle. That’s my theory.
Mettler: Right—and it was all done honestly. Nobody faked anything, and we could feel how real it was. Ok, since we’ve talked about it now being 30 years after the fact, let’s jump ahead another 50 years, and say it’s 2075. However people listen to music 50 years from now and they type in “Doug Rasheed” or “Coolio” or “L.V.” into a listening device and this song comes up, what do you want that future listener to get from “Gangsta’s Paradise”?
L.V.: Well, if they’re not living like we were living, then they have to get their own experience out of it. But I’m hoping they get the experience that we got.
Rasheed: Yeah. I think it’ll offer them a glimpse into the past, and how things were. Even looking 30 years back now, things are different now than they were then. And probably, the way I look at some of the classics of the ’20s and ’30s [in the 20th century]—I love all of that music, and it offers me a glimpse of how life might’ve been back then, you know? I think that’s what they’ll get. I think this song will still be around, and still be a classic.
L.V.: Yeah. I think the song would still be a hit then too—just like it is now! (All laugh) Hey, do you know what L.V. stands for?
Mettler: I saw online what it stands for, L.V., but I think you should really be the one to tell us what it is.
L.V.: It’s a Large Variety of vocal ability.
Rasheed: I never knew that, L.V.! You just taught me something! (chuckles)
L.V.: That’s what it actually stands for.
Rasheed: That’s crazy. And it was really good to have these questions today. This is the first time we’ve ever interviewed together. This is the first time L.V. and I have done one together, so thanks for doing it. I’ve got my book coming out sometime in the fall, and I’ll let you know more about it when it’s ready to be published.
Mettler: Sounds good, Doug! L.V., are we gonna be getting a book from you at some point?
L.V.: Oh no, you’re not getting no book (more laughter)—but you still be getting music from me. I have new music still coming.
Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise (Feat. L.V.)” can be listened to in Dolby Atmos here on Apple Music.
