Coolio Net Worth Estimate
Coolio net worth is estimated to be at between $300,000 and $600,000. Coolio’s net worth most comes from his many years in the music industry.
He has been working consistently as an extremely famous and successful rap artist since the mid 1990s, and is considered to be a major pop culture icon.
Who is Coolio?
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Coolio is the stage name of Artis Leon Ivey, Jr. He is a rap artist, singer, actor, and music producer. A predecessor to modern rap acts like OT Genasis and Lil Tecca, he is best known for a run of successful albums in the 1990s, particularly the song “Gangsta’s Paradise” in 1995.
He also sang the theme song for the hit series on Nickelodeon, Kenan & Kel, later that decade, and in more recent years, had a career path change and focused on being a chef.
Coolio’s Career
Image credit Martin Valigursky, Denis Makarenko/shutterstock.com
Coolio’s professional career as a rap artist really kicked off in 1987, with the release of “Whatcha Gonna Do?”, a successful single. The next year, he recorded another single called “What Makes You Dance (Force Groove),” which helped continue to build his profile and reputation in the rap and hip hop community.
By the start of the 90s, Coolio became part of a locally popular rap group called WC and the Maad Circle. He was featured on their first album, which was called Ain’t A Damn Thang Changed, and had a moderate hit with the song “Dress Code”.
His time with WC and the Maad Circle helped give him the experience and cred he needed to eventually get signed by a label, Tommy Boy Records in 1994, who released It Takes a Thief, his first album as a solo artist, in 1994.
The album is most notable for the song, “Fantastic Voyage,” which was an extremely successful single. MTV played its video constantly, helping the song hit the third spot on Billboard Hot 100. The album itself got to the eighth spot on Billboard 2000, and was eventually certified as a Platinum record.
Critics particularly appreciated the sense of humour Coolio showed in his lyrics, which helped set Coolio’s work apart from a lot of the other stuff coming out in the gangsta rap genre at the time.
Coolio’s biggest mainstream success of all time, however, came next. He landed the honor of being asked to write a song for the Michelle Pfeiffer film, Dangerous Minds.
This song was “Gangsta’s Paradise”, which sampled Stevie Wonder’s then 20 year old song “Pastime Paradise” from his Songs in the Key of Life album.
“Gangsta’s Paradise” had a pop cultural impact that went far beyond the film it was written for. It wasn’t only the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in a row, but the top single for any genre in the U.S. in 1995, which is an incredibly rare occurrence.
Meanwhile, it was also a major global success. It was number 1 in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden.
It was such a hit that it won him his first Grammy in 1996, this one for Best Rap Solo Performance. Weird Al Yankovic’s parody of the song, “Amish Paradise” on his album Bad Hair Day, which itself became a hit, only made public knowledge and love for the song grow even wider, even though Coolio himself wasn’t pleased with it, claiming Yankovic hadn’t requested permission. For what it’s worth, Yankovic claims that he had.
It’s a sign of just how phenomenally huge the song was that, even though it was meant to only be a single to tie in with Dangerous Minds, Coolio and his team decided to change course and make it the title track of his next album. It went on to sell over two million copies and be certified double platinum.
The song remains relevant to this day, even appearing in the trailer to the recent Sonic the Hedgehog film. And although they didn’t have nearly the last power of the title track, the album also featured two songs that would be huge at the time, “Too Hot” and “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)”.
He had another big hit in 1996 with yet another song for a film, this one called “It’s All the Way Live (Now)” for Eddie, which is mostly forgotten today. It starred Whoopi Goldberg as the coach of a basketball team.
And that still wasn’t his only hit movie tune. He also appeared on “Hit ‘em High,” along with Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, Method Man, and B-Real for the modern classic Space Jam, which paired basketball superstar Michael Jordan with all of the classic Looney Tunes characters from Warner Bros, such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc.
Along with film songs, he also made an impact on TV, singing the theme song to the extremely popular Kenan & Kel show on the cable channel, Nickelodeon.
While everyone was expecting huge things for his follow-up album to Gangsta’s Paradise, however, My Soul, his third album, wasn’t nearly as successful. It had one huge hit called “C U When U Get There,” but it didn’t sell as much as the studio had hoped, to the point that his label dropped him.
The sad follow-up to Gangsta’s Paradise is that, although Coolio has released six albums since that gargantuan hit (Coolio.com, El Cool Magnifico, The Return of the Gangsta, Steal Hear, From the Bottom 2 the Top, and Long Live the Thief), not a single one has charted on Billboard.
In recent years, however, Coolio has had an extremely unexpected reinvention in the form of becoming a chef. In 2009, he surprised everyone by putting out a cookbook that became a New York Times bestseller called Cookin’ with Coolio: 5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price.
And while for many people that seemed to come out of left field, Coolio actually took this very seriously. He also became the host of YouTube cooking show also called Cookin’ with Coolio.
In 2013, he even decided to auction off the rights to all of his songs, whose royalties at the time were bringing in $23,227 a year, in order to pursue his dreams of being a chef. It’s been said that the only thing Coolio has been doing longer than rapping, is cooking!
His goal was to “invest the funds from the song catalogue sale to expand his cookbook series and his online cooking show of the same name,” as he said in the press release he used to announce this surprise move.
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Coolio: Early Life
Coolio was born in Compton, California on 1 August 1963, under the legal name Artis Leon Ivey, Jr. He grew up under working class conditions. Jackie Ivey (whose maiden name was Jones), his mom, was a factory worker at the time, and his dad, Artis Ivey, Sr., did carpentry work. By the time Coolio reached the age of 2, however, his dad had left his mother. She remarried, however.
Coolio grew up with fairly serious asthma to the point that he often couldn’t go outdoors, so he spent most of his younger years in the home, reading voraciously. He was considered one of the smartest students in the school he attended and lived only one street away from the local library.
As a kid, he was usually referred to as “Boo,” a pet name that his mother gave him. He even had the name tattooed on his arm when he was in 8th grade.
His mom’s separation from his stepdad when he was 11 hit him very hard, though, which led to him beginning to act out. He also faced a high amount of bullying while at school, and his mother began engaging in heavy drinking as a result of her divorce.
He began hanging out with a gang of other young people named the Baby Crips, and taking dangerous weapons into his high school.
This culminated in him being sent to prison for 10 months when he was 17. The full story isn’t known to this day, but he was found guilty of attempting to cash a money order that had been taken as part of a violent robbery. It’s unclear if he was covering for a friend or whether he was mistaken for someone else. But long story short, he celebrated his 18th birthday in prison.
After he got out, he tried to get his life back on track by enrolling in Compton Community College.
While there, he began to discover his love and talent for performing hip-hop music. He started to compete regularly, taking on the stage name “Coolio Iglesias,” a pun on the famous Latin singer, Julio Iglesias. He was so good that a radio station in Los Angeles, California began to spotlight him on a regular basis.
At this time, Coolio was also dealing with a serious substance abuse issue, which got to the point that it got in the way of him pursuing the career he hoped for music, ultimately leading to him going to rehab.
After he got out, he moved to San Jose, California, where his dad took him in. He worked as a firefighter with the California Department of Forestry, and worked security at Los Angeles International Airport, while also trying to get his rap career to take off. When his mom tragically died of a brain hemorrhage, he escaped even further into his music.
Coolio’s Personal Life and Family
Coolio was married once, to a woman named Josefa Salinas, between the years of 1996 to 2000. As far as we know, however, he is single now. He has ten children: Grtis, Artisha, Milan, Jackie, Kate, Brandi, Shayne, Zhaneand, Darius, and Artis III.
Coolio’s Social Media Influence
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Although Coolio doesn’t have a huge a social media following as one might expect from someone of his standing in the industry, it’s possible that this is at least in some part due to the fact that a lot of his fans are older and not as active on the internet as for some of the younger celebrities we often profile.
Coolio has a public Facebook profile. He has 395,851 fans who follow him on this platform.
On it, he tends to post information about upcoming shows, performance videos, photos and videos of himself, and more. This includes footage both of his music and his cooking.
Coolio also has an official account on Twitter. His handle is @coolio. On this platform, he has 172.5 thousand followers, and is himself following only 22 people.
He doesn’t seem to update this account very often, however, and when he does, he tends to be reposting photos, plugs for various events and music, etc., that he’s also posted on his other social media accounts.
Coolio is also on Instagram. Like Twitter, his account name is @coolio. His follower count on Instagram is 113,000, and he follows 104 people himself.
He seems to be a much more active Instagram user than he is on Twitter, posting lots of videos of himself, photos with friends and collaborators, event posters, and more.
Coolio does not seem to have a public LinkedIn business account at the current time. Should this change in the future, we will be sure to update this page with the latest information.
TikTok
Coolio has a TikTok account as well. His name on this platform is @theofficialcoolio. He has 45,000 followers on TikTok and 108.2 thousand likes. He is himself following only 8 accounts.
He uses this account to post videos of his concerts, funny videos of himself and his friends, plugs for concerts, and other things of that nature.
Coolio: Height, Weight
Coolio is 5 feet, 8 inches tall, which is 172 in centimeters. Although his exact weight is not public knowledge, it is estimated to be at about 176.37 pounds, which is 80 in kilos. Both his eye color, and his hair color, are dark brown.
Coolio Net Worth & Bio Summary
| Name | Coolio |
| Real Name | Artis Leon Ivey, Jr. |
| Age | 59 |
| Place of Birth | Compton, California, USA |
| Occupation | Chef, Rapper |
| Net Worth Estimate | $300,000-$600,000 |