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Dave WielengaWed. June 11
 

Paradise maintained with Coolio


ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

Coolio’s been on a comeback from the get-go. Even his major-label breakthrough It Takes A Thief (which won the rap Grammy in 1994) was a rebound from late ‘80s radio play on long-lamented KDAY and early ‘90s work with WC and the Maad Circle, each of those sorta-successes followed by falls into drug busts and off the musical map. That’s pretty much how he’s spent the last decade, too.

So here he comes again, this time on a so-so old school bill at the Honda Center, and if you’re rolling your eyes and counting him out, you weren’t at the (then) Irvine Meadows Amphitheater in the middle of a hotter-than-blazes afternoon for Summer Jam 1994.

Hours of relentless sun had beaten everybody down, and Coolio was just one man—in white shorts, white tennies and a short-sleeved, button-up, Ozzie Nelson-plaid shirt—on a very big stage. But he was enough. Bouncing out as if he had those springy braids on his feet as well as his head, Coolio delivered a half-hour set that brought the half-baked audience to its feet within the first five minutes. It was truly was a fantastic voyage, and nobody along for that ride would ever turn down the chance to go again.

FREESTYLE EXPLOSION WITH COOLIO, YOUNG MC, NAUGHTY BY NATURE, TONE LOC, LISA LISA AND MORE AT HONDA CENTER | 2695 E KATELLA AVE | ANAHEIM 92806 | FRI 7:30PM | $36-76 | ALL AGES | LIVENATION.COM

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