Coolio It Takes a Thief

Coolio 'It Takes a Thief' (Tommy Boy, 1994)

One of the funniest memories I have of Shady Lady's is Pringle and I dancing to Coolio's 'Gangster's Paradise'. It was hilarious and made a lot of people leave the dance floor and Pringle, in particular, did a totally over the top gangsta dance whilst reciting every word. I'm chuckling away whilst typing this. You probably had to be there.

Coolio played the Liquid Rooms some years later and made an appearance at Bar Kohl, a regular haunt for a number of my capital based friends, where Falgun and a few others hung out with him. Falgun is friends with Flava Flav so he has as much tolerance as anybody for hanging out with rap madmen, but even he thought Coolio was a 'D*ck!'. Da Goon is usually a good judge of character so I'll trust him on that.

The title track is the best song on 'It's Takes a Thief' because it's a little bit creepy and tells the tale of a home invasion with a quasi-horror soundtrack. The best known track is 'Fantastic Voyage' and it's second rate G Funk. As you can imagine Coolio is keen to remind us of his gangsta credentials at every turn and it's fairly amusing, particularly on the brilliantly titled 'Hand on my Nutsac'. Otherwise Coolio's debut, like his entire career, bar his talismanic hit, is unremarkable.

Coolio is a Juggalo, the bizarre cult/gang of Insane Clown Posse fans, which is hilarious. What makes it even funnier is he has a misspelt tattoo which reads; 'Jugalo Cool'. He claims the misspelling is deliberate. Brilliant stuff.

Peace