Coolio Has Been Cooking, And Not What You Think
On November 17, 44-year-old semi-retired rapper Coolio, as famous for his crack cocaine drug bust last spring as for his music, embarked on a new path. With the release of “Cookin’ with Coolio”, he is following up a web series of the same name from the website and network aptly named “My Damn Channel”. Its popularity led him to the world of publishing, which was ready for something a little different in the cooking arena.
You Can't Make Stuff Like This Up.
This ain’t Julia Child. It certainly isn’t Martha Stewart (no matter how much street cred she got for appearing with Busta Rhymes on the MTV Awards stage a few years back). Coolio, who says he’s been cooking for more than 30 years—since he was 10 years old—has developed “Ghetto Gourmet”, soul food with a healthy twist that isn’t expensive.
No, really.
In case you missed it (and you know you did), he even had his own show on the Oxygen network, which most people have either never heard of or forgot existed. The show, which premiered in October of 2008, is a reality show called “Coolio’s Rules” that covers the former mug-shot poster-boy as he launches a catering business, balancing his family life with his 4 children, aged 15-20, and the woman who exchanged wedding rings with Coolio’s former friend David Faustino (Bud Bundy from “Married with Children”). It’s a gangsta’s life, as seen through the eyes of the post-menopausal women who watch the Oxygen network.
Stop laughing. This is for real.
“Cookin’ with Coolio” is truly unique collection of recipes, the names of which are most definitely from the mind of the Man Himself. His “Fork Steak” requires no knife, something that would have come in handy during a jail term. The Steak goes beautifully with the “Heavenly Ghettalian Garlic Bread”. “Ghettalian” is ‘Ghetto and “Italian” mixed. That Coolio. He’s clever.
He is proud to enlighten us to his gastronomical fabulosity, telling us that he “is gonna teach yo ass how to cook”. When asked who he thinks of as his TV-show chef competition, he answered, “I like Rachael Ray. I like Bobby Flay. I like all them cats. But they are not the Gourmet Ghetto, baby. My motto is: I cook better than your Shaka Zulu mama. And I wash my hands a lot.”
Good to know, Coolio.
He also teaches us the intricacies of “Soul Rolls”, Banana Ba-ba-ba-bread”, and “Finger-Lickin’, Rib-Stickin’, Fall-Off-the-Bone-and-into-Your-Mouth Chicken”. It’s worth buying the book just to read his directions on “How to Become a Kitchen Pimp”, “Chillin’ and Grillin’” and “Pasta like a Rasta”.
In “The Ghetto Gourmet”, Coolio explains “Karate Meat” by saying it “ain’t just called Karate Meat because it’s got an Asian kick to it. It’s called Karate Meat because it will beat you up like a pigeon in prison.” And who would know better than our neighborhood crackhead who posed for The Mugshot Heard Round the World? But he embraces his experience in the drug culture by telling is that the best way to make an egg roll is to “Roll it nice and tight like a blunt.”
Anyone who doesn’t know what that means wouldn’t be buying the book, anyway.
He also tells us: “Let me be perfectly clear. You ain’t cookin’ with fire. You ain’t cookin’ with heat. You’re cookin’ with Coolio, mother******!”
Actually, that’s not a bad sentiment from the man who’s best known use of a flame was to light a crack pipe. Congrats to the man for pullin’ himself up by his crazy dreads, and for showing us how to make “5-Star Meals at a 1-Star Price”.