LOS ANGELES — Coolio is proof that just because you are the coolest person in your chosen field that doesn’t mean you automatically get respect from your children.
That becomes clear in the new Oxygen Channel reality series “Coolio’s Rules.” The rapper juggles being a dad to four teens while starting a catering business. How that happens will be played out in the six-episode series that launches locally at 11 tonight.
“Sometimes when I ask them (his children), ‘How do you feel about this song?’ And they will say straight up, ‘That’s whack.’ It was a little bit hard to take in the beginning. I was thinking that I was their favorite rapper. But I’m not, not by a long shot,” Coolio says during an interview in July at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
He’s flanked by his biggest critics — Jackie, Artis, Brandi and Artisha Ivey. In case you are not rap savvy, Coolio’s real name is Artis Leon Ivey Jr. Coolio and Josefa Salinas married in 1996. They now are divorced. Coolio has two other sons who declined to be part of the reality show.
It is his son Artis who comes to Coolio’s rescue in a kind of backhanded way. Artis says he does view his dad as being cool.
“But only to a certain extent. I don’t like when he goes out in public and does little things. He’s very outgoing. He likes to be wild and flamboyant all in public. But I like to be calm. Other than that, my dad is pretty cool, though,” Artis says.
The public part of Coolio’s life is a big factor in the show. He had spent months on the road touring before coming home to shoot the series. Coolio made the heavy commitment to his music career because he didn’t have a lot while growing up in Compton, Calif. He wants his family to have more.
This is not Coolio’s first television exposure. He appeared on such programs as “The Nanny,” “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” “Futurama,” “Charmed,” “Beat the Geeks” and “Celebrity Fear Factor.” He says this television show will be different from all the rest.
“I keep it real all the time. Every day. I don’t really know how to fake it. I tried it. I tried playing the game, quote, unquote, and trying to be that guy who was always politically correct. For a while I did OK, and then I realized that it wasn’t really me, so I started completely, completely being myself,’ Coolio says.
That honesty comes though in one episode in which a family dinner goes bad when his children decide they hate the food. In another episode Coolio deals with romance in a house filled with kids.
Executive producer Greg Goldman says the name of the reality show says it all.
“The name of the show is called ‘Coolio’s Rules’ and that comes from the fact that he’s making all the rules. It all starts with Coolio’s rule No. 1: ‘He who pays the bills, makes the rules.’ As long as you play by the rules, which the kids sometimes do, everything is cool, and Coolio is copacetic and the most supportive dad you can ever have. But God forbid you break the rules, and hell hath no fury like a Coolio scorned,” Goldman says.
