Thanks to Coolio¡s wife, she contacted Wonder’s brother and managed to convince Wonder to meet with Coolio, In the end, Wonder agreed to allow Coolio to use the sample but only if certain conditions were met. Originally, Stevie Wonder did not want Coolio to sample “Pastime Paradise” as he didn’t want his song to be used in “some gangster song”.
The track starts out with a line from Psalm 23:4: “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”, and features some religious tones due to gospel-like choir vocals in the background of the track.
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“Gangsta’s Paradise” was on the soundtrack of 1995 movie “Dangerous Minds”, a film which starred Michelle Pfeiffer as a teacher in a “ghetto” high school. The track is one of the best-selling singles of all time, and is ranked #69 on Billboard’s “Greatest Songs of All-Time”, and #28 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of Hip-Hop”. The track was the soundtrack for the 1995 film “Dangerous Minds”, and samples the chorus and instrumentation of Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song, “Pastime Paradise”, altering the original lyrics of “they’ve been spending most of their lives / living in a pastime paradise”, to “been spendin’ most their lives / livin’ in a gangsta’s paradise”. Coolio (real name Artis Leon Ivey) released “Gangsta’s Paradise” in 1995, on his same titled album.