Coolio Gangstas Paradise was a huge tune back in the ’90s with so much airplay and videos constantly playing on MTV, but trust me its not all about that one song at a Coolio show. This was an intimate show at a local venue to me which has some class acts constantly going through. I was lucky enough to be at the venue early and catch the band sound checking and damn it was loud and also perfect. Coolio’s band consists of some awesome musicians, trust me, and one of those was ‘Jarel Posey’ (Jarez) Coolio’s cousin who has his own music out there. He joined in on backing vocals and damn this guy can sing but when he played the saxophone WOW and like I say in his own right he’s just superb.
So the show / well Coolio as I’ve said has a full band behind him playing live. Yeah, there was a backing track but only for the odd intro and sound effects, other than that it was his band supplying every note and beat. The band started jamming with no signs of Coolio at all and then the guitarist and backing vocalist ‘AJ Luke’ started saying “are you ready for Coolio” to an almighty cheer from the audience, “hey you can do better than that, ARE YOU READY FOR COOLIO” YYYEEEEAAAAHHH!! then he walked through the audience to the stage and straight into some old tracks and new delivered as you would expect from a class act like this.
Coolio joked with the crowd quite a lot throughout the night with smiles afterwards. He played his collaboration with Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, Method Man, and B-Real, ‘Hit ‘Em High’, from the 90s Space Jam soundtrack, this was a great addition to the set and totally forgot how good this track is. Half way through he introduced the band; first up he introduced AJ Luke guitarist and backing vocals who was playing a lush white Dave Navarro PRS Guitar and he then executed an amazing solo. He then introduced Jarel Posey (Jarez) on saxophone and backing vocals who played a quick sax solo. Also, his drummer, which I did not catch his name, was in the pocket all night. As a drummer myself, you could just tell and feel his vibe. Coolio also had a female vocalist on backing vocals who blasted out some opera flawlessly.
After all the introductions they played hit after hit, which then led into the later-era track ‘If I Was Your Boyfriend’ where he was joking with a lot with couples in the audience which was funny. Go get a ticket and witness this moment for yourselves ha ha ha. Other tracks like ‘C U When You Get There’, the 90s hit that he dedicated to pretty much every great artist who has passed away in the past 20 years including Biggie and Tupac, and yes he ended on Gangstas Paradise and rightfully so. Its what put him into the mainstream, I would like to say this was a class show of how a gig should be. If you closed your eyes the sound was so big you would think it was in a huge venue. I would like to add that Coolio has so much energy and passion in this performance and he deserves to be back playing huge venues because the whole sound provided by his band is a true class act and that’s a fact…
