I Love Bad Music: The Real 1, 2, 3, 4

HT Contributor Eliot Glazer has tremendously terrible taste in music. But he makes everything sound so damn appealing, so we allow him this little soapbox…

Everybody loves a wide-eyed indie starlet with a voice like silk and a penchant for writing airy, eclectic ditties. But someone’s got to tell Feist to give corporate shilling a quick break so we can be reminded of the artist who originally made 1, 2, 3, 4 a quirky breakthrough. Ladies and gentlemen: Coolio.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I think back to what it was that made Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise the first CD I bought with my own money. What persuaded me to proudly saunter into my local Sam Goody and trade weeks’ worth of allowance for a record that managed to turn gangsta rap into the musical equivalent of swallowable tablets? I don’t know, but whatever the sentiment was, it was one to which everyone seemed to have subscribed.

In 1995, Coolio was on top of his game. Gangsta’s Paradise was one of the most successful singles of all time, and it did a fine job marrying a Stevie Wonder riff with hip hop’s then-omnipresent proclamations of the hardships of street life. There’s also no other song that could so perfectly compliment the image of an arms-folded Michelle Pfeiffer in a leather jacket and Mom Jeans.

But 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New) is the one that really does it for me. If you’re going to trust someone with weird-ass braids to pen a party rap about counting all the way to four and misspelling parentheticals, you leave the job to Coolio.

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1, 2, 3, 4, for me, at least, allowed me to realize that such a childish-sounding (albeit stupidly awesome) jam really helped Coolio inherit one of the pussiest titles ever: the second-most kid-friendly rapper beside Will Smith.