US rapper Coolio was found dead in the bathroom of a friend’s home in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The cause of his death is still unclear but Coolio was just 59 years old.
Coolio — whose real name was Artis Leon Ivey Jr — was among hip hop’s biggest names of the 1990s.
His song Gangsta’s Paradise went to number one in at least 19 countries and believed to be the biggest-selling single of 1995 worldwide. It stayed at number one in Australia for 13 weeks.
Born in Monessen, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh, Coolio moved to Compton, California, where he went to community college.
He worked as a volunteer firefighter and in airport security before devoting himself full-time to the hip hop scene.
Coolio and jazz saxophonist Jarez were enlisted in July 2008 as spokespersons by the group Environmental Justice and Climate Change to educate students at historically black colleges and universities about global warming.
Coolio who was taken to hospital with asthma several times as a child was also a spokesperson for the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
