Weird Al Yankovic paid tribute to fellow musician Coolio following the rapper’s death earlier this week at the age of 59. Taking to his Twitter late Wednesday night (September 28), Weird Al shared an adorable photo of himself hugging Coolio with the caption “RIP Coolio.” The kind gesture was noticed by fans, as the pair once had a famous feud over Al’s parody of one of Coolio’s songs.
Back in 1995, Coolio quickly gained worldwide recognition with his huge hit “Gangsta Paradise.” At the time, the song was everywhere, including the soundtrack for the Michelle Pfeiffer film Dangerous Minds. (And it’s still popular today: the song has been streamed more than one billion times on both Spotify and YouTube). “I thought it was going to be a hood record,” Coolio told The Voice in 2017, per BBCNews. “I never thought it would crossover the way that it did – to all ages, races, genres, countries and generations.”
It also spawned a hilarious imitation in Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise,” which caused the feud, as Coolio’s manager said he had approved of the parody before it was released, while Coolio claimed he was never made aware of it, according to the outlet. Obviously, with the touching tribute, Weird Al was able to move past the feud. And, according to music writer Dan Ozzi, so was Coolio, as Dan shared a tweet about a past interview with the late star, who said he was in a good place with Weird Al at the time.
“I let that go so long ago,” Coolio said, per Dan’s tweet. “Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong. Y’all remember that, everybody out there who reads this s***.”
The Grammy winner went on to say “real people” should be able to admit when they are wrong. “I was wrong, bro. Come on, who the f*** am I, bro?” Coolio continued. “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 s*** and being stupid and I was wrong and I should’ve embraced that s*** and went with it.”
“I listened to it a couple years after that and it’s actually funny as s***,” Coolio added. “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.”