Pour one out. Loved the two buck chuck. Sometimes it was actually really good, sometimes it was quite garbage. It was like wine roulette.
Yeah, no.
I taste wine, I donāt drink it.
But, if I like it what I taste, I taste a lot of it.
Louise Fletcher, best known as Nurse Ratched
RIP Coolio
RIP Coolio, who through his work inspired many great hits, such as this one:
Coolio was pretty incensed about that, as I recall. Didnāt he take Weird Al to court?
Should have been a little more, you know, coolio about it.
Eventually he was:
During an interview with Sean Evans on Hot Ones in 2016, Coolio further expressed regret for how he initially responded to āAmish Paradiseā. āIn hindsight, it was stupid of me to say something about [Yankovic] doing a parody of āGangstaās Paradiseā,ā he said. āI mean, he did Michael Jackson, he did Prince. You know, people who were definitely more talented than I am. I think Prince did say somethingā¦ but he wasnāt very vocal about it like I was. And it just made me look dumbā¦ It was one of the dumb things I did. And Iām willing to admit I did something stupid.ā[6]
Oh thatās interesting. Thanks for sharing.
i would think a Yankovic parody would help sales of the original
It was like Coolio dared to be stupid . . .
IIRC, Weird Al did send royalties to Coolio from sales of the album containing Amish Paradise and never did the song during a concert out of respect for Coolioās feelings about the song.
And after this SNAFU, Weird Al made it a point to talk with an artist directly before moving forward with a parody project.
Yeah, i saw an interview with Weird Al where he said he didnāt worry about copyright issues because he always got permission from the artist he was parodying. That must have been after that incident.
Before this incident, he got the (formal) permission from the artistās agent . . . which he did for Gansta Paradise. Royalties from the sale of the album couldnāt be sued for; but Al still paid an appropriate amount for that song.
Yeah, I think Weird Al did what he legally needed to do for Amish Paradise, but Coolio still didnāt like it.
I agree with @PatientZombie that it probably did have at least a mildly positive affect on album / ticket sales for Coolio.
Legally, itās a parody and he probably didnāt need any permission at all.
Iām pretty sure thatās false. The music is intellectual property.
There are specific exceptions to copyright law for parody, as well as several other purposes. Weird Al changes the songs enough that heād be likely to win a lawsuit. But he wants to make people smile, not get into IP fights.
Ok, Google is telling me youāre correct. TIL.
I believe he always asked permission, even before this, and even though he never needed it. And, he didnāt record parodies if he did not get permission. Just being a nice guy. (He might play them in concert, though.)
Because, sometimes the artist wants to be included in some way.
Also, he did get permission from a record company who also owned the rights (ānon-exclusiveā) to the song āAmish Paradiseā so that is why he did it.
Fun read here:
I believe you need permission from the rights holder, who is not necessarily the artist.