1995 Coolio: Gangsta's Paradise

The title of Laurie Anderson's 1981 hit 'Oh Superman' was suffixed by the dedication 'for Massanet'; Anderson had based her song on "Ô Souverain" from Massanet's opera 'El Cid', an aria of surrender to superior forces beyond your control. It's themes are present, albeit updated, in Anderson's own observational monologue of a whole world collapsing in on itself as its core values fall away - "Cause when love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom". 'Gangsta's Paradise' isn't suffixed by 'for Wonder', but through being so closely based on Stevie Wonder's 1976 song 'Past Time Paradise', then it should have been, not least because Coolio twists the original into something else entirely in a manner that echo's Anderson's own approach.

Of course, sampling has been prevalent in rap and hip hop since Afrika Bambaataa was borrowing beats from Kraftwerk and the Yellow Magic Orchestra, yet while its undeniable that anybody with ears could tell that the whole main melody of 'Gangsta's Paradise' is lifted wholesale from Wonder's track, it's not in this case simply a matter of plagiarism by a lazy writer (its use has Wonder's blessing in any case). And that's because, despite the immediate similarities, Coolio's song updates or 'answers' Wonder's with a stance that's a reversed mirror image to the message of the source.

Both tracks have the plight of the black man in latter day America at their core, but while Wonder bemoans the inertia of a race ("They've been wasting most their lives, glorifying days long gone behind") waiting patiently to inherit the earth ("they keep telling of the day when the Saviour of love will come to stay"), Coolio's generation have left such blind acceptance behind and are all out to take it ("Me be treated like a punk, you know that's unheard of, you better watch how ya talking and where ya walking, or you and your homies might be lined in chalk").

Rap is frequently castigated for glorifying and romanticising violence, but nobody in this 'paradise' is wearing anything so rose tinted - violence is a matter of fact of every day life ("death ain't nothing but a heart beat away") governed by its own in-built code of the street ("But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it") and presented as a shot of realism that neither glorifies nor condemns. And then in terms of music, 'Past Time Paradise's lyric of good times gone was replicated in a baroquely yearning, almost chamber music arrangement that tipped it's hat at 'Eleanor Rigby'. There are strings in 'Gangsta' s Paradise' too, but their wounded animal cries drip with a Bernard Hermann paranoia, ably assisted by the heartbeat thump of a bass-driven march and ghostly choir on the chorus that amplifies the urban dread in a way not heard in these pages since 'Ghost Town'.

It's been a long time coming, but after a few false starts and splutters, 'Gangsta's Paradise' is the first genuine rap number one. True, there are going to be many who won't see that as any great leap forward, but whatever your politics regarding the genre, it's heartening to see the public embracing something with a genuine edge and menace in these horse latitudes of the mid nineties where blandness has become a virtue and the norm rather than the exception. Which isn't bad for a song from a hokey Michelle Pfeiffer film that few remember now.