Rapper Coolio's death last year was caused by fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid painkiller, his former manager has confirmed.
The star, who was among hip-hop’s biggest names of the 1990s with hits including Gangsta’s Paradise and Fantastic Voyage, also had traces of heroin and methamphetamine in his system. He was 59 when he was found dead at a friend's house in Los Angeles on September 28, 2002.
The cause of his death was revealed by his former longtime manager Jarez Posey in a statement to The Associated Press. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office listed his death as accidental and cited cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, as a “significant condition”.
Posey also confirmed that investigators determined Coolio’s severe asthma and cigarette smoking played a role in his death.
The rapper was born Artis Leon Ivey Jr in Monessen, Pennsylvania, and later moved to Compton, California. He started rapping at 15 and knew by 18 it was what he wanted to do with his life, he said in interviews.
Coolio won a Grammy for best solo rap performance for Gangsta’s Paradise, the 1995 hit from the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film Dangerous Minds that sampled Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song Pastime Paradise.
His career album sales totalled 4.8 million, with 978 million on-demand streams of his songs, according to Luminate. He was nominated for a total of six Grammys.
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He also branched out into acting, providing a voice for an animated show. And he took part in Celebrity Big Brother in the UK in 2009, coming third behind TV presenters Ulrika Jonsson and Terry Christian.
His estate plans to release a studio album later this year that he had been working on in the days before he died.
Fentanyl is up to 100 times more powerful than heroin and is often used to cut the street drug. It and other opioids were responsible for 75 per cent of all drug overdose deaths in 2020.
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