The One Ingredient Coolio Said Was A Chef's Superpower

Coolio made sporadic appearances on the American celeb cooking scene and though the rapper was not a chef by trade, he believed in a chef superpower.

Coolio, or Artis Leon Ivey Jr. by birth, was best known for his multi-platinum album "Gangsta's Paradise," per XXL Magazine. According to Cooking Backstage, the music star started cooking 30-minute recipes when he was 10 years old. While many of his public cooking stints were fraught with jest (like his Youtube show Cooking with Coolio), he took himself and his cooking skills seriously. He even brought out a cookbook called "Cookin' with Coolio."

In this book he spoke of himself as the "ghetto Martha Stewart, the black Rachael Ray," per The Village Voice. He elaborated on this statement in an interview with Boston.com when he said that he saw a bit of Gordon Ramsay's temper in himself, Rachael Ray's ability to cook quick meals, and Martha Stewart's good taste. The rapper even had a special ingredient that he thought was a chef's superpower (via Foodsided).

There is no record of Coolio's formal cooking tuition, he said he was inspired by his mother's style of cooking and his curiosity (via Boston.com). Coolio's recipes were often fusions usually inspired by more than one cultural cuisine, and he took it upon himself to name them, too. "I am the Ghetto Gourmet, and my style of cooking is ghetto fusion. Instead of saying African-American and Asian, I say Blasian. Instead of saying urban and Italian, I say Ghettalian," he disclosed.

Chefs seemed to have their favorite ingredients, and Coolio was no different. The rapper firmly advocated for cooking with bacon and called it a chef's superpower, per Foodsided, for its flavor. Among his zanier suggestions were bacon-wrapped corn. The Grammy Award winner and music star's strong belief in bacon was reinforced by his collaboration with Hormel Black Label to make bacon-scented wrapping paper, per Little Black Book.