Coolio dealt with extreme poverty while he was growing up and struggled with drug addiction from when he was a teenager – once even claiming to be LA’s first crack addict.
The Gangsta’s Paradise rapper faced public drug battles and run-ins with the law but was also an inspiring story to success before he was discovered dead at the age of 59.
Coolio, whose real name was Artis Leon Ivey Jr, was born in Pennsylvania, and later moved to Compton, California where he was known to be a highly intelligent child.
READ MORE: Gangsta’s Paradise rapper Coolio dies aged 59 in his ‘mate’s bathroom’
According to his biography by Steve Huey, things took a turn when his parents got divorced when he was 11, leading the future rapper affiliating himself with the Baby Crips gang.
(Image: FilmMagic)
Trying to fit in at school, Coolio created an unstable persona and developed menacing behaviour, bringing weapons into school and bringing to an end his once-bright educational future.
Upon releasing his first single Watcha Gonna Do, the rapper’s fame was short lived as he spiralled into a serious drug problem which derailed his music career.
The biography states that Coolio checked himself into rehab for a crack cocaine addiction and tried to straighten himself out by taking up a job as a firefighter.
(Image: Getty Images)
A few years after the release of Gangster’s Paradise, Coolio fell into another bout of short-lived success after his third album barely made it into the Top 40 charts.
Falling back into bad habits, the rapper and seven friends were arrested in 1997 for shoplifting at a German clothing store and assaulting the owner.
He was sentenced to six months probation and was given a $17,000 fine.
In summer of 1998, he was arrested again for driving on the wrong side of the road and was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon.
(Image: Getty Images)
In 2009, Coolio was charged with possession of crack cocaine and battery – the latter which came from allegedly grabbing a security officer’s arm while his luggage was being searched.
Speaking about his arrest, the It Takes a Thief hitmaker insisted the pipe found within his belongings wasn’t his.
“I’ve travelled all over this country with various drugs, but never once have I ever put any dope inside my bag. I’m not an idiot. The first thing I said when they pulled that pipe out of my bad was that it wasn’t mine,” he said in a YouTube video.
(Image: Redferns)
The rapper claims he demanded the pipe be tested for traces of his DNA as he was adamant it was planted, adding: “They wouldn’t let me clear my name.”
He went on to say that the pipe belonged to his cousins and she put it in his bag because he kicked her out for smoking crack cocaine in his bathroom.
“She took the pipe and put it in the bag. I come home and I’m running late and I grabbed that bag. I didn’t know it was there. I haven’t even talked to her for her to tell me that she put it in there. I just deduced that because I wasn’t in my bathroom smoking crack, she was,” he explained.
The rapper admitted that by that point he wasn’t smoking crack, but he had relapsed and begun snorting cocaine again.
(Image: Getty Images)
“After that happened, I started smoking a little bit again because I was depressed. I did it for about a year after that and then I quit again.
“If I get another drug charge, you know they planted it on me.”
He later admitted that if the arrest had never happened, no one would have known he was back taking cocaine again therefore it enabled him to “get himself under control.”
Despite his regular run-ins with the law, Coolio continued to release music and was also in demand on the small screen, finishing third in Celebrity Big Brother in 2009 and appearing on the Ultimate edition of the programme on year later.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
