In the 2014 interview with Vice, Coolio explained that his Juggalo tattoo was not misspelled at all: The spelling is just how he intended it, and inventive spellings such as his tattoo are just part of how hip hop culture works. Coolio said (via Vice), "Instead of putting s's on the end of something, we put z's. Instead of spelling something with a 'k,' we spell it with a 'c.' If it's supposed to be spelled with a 'c,' we spell it with a 'k.'"
In 2016, hip hop news outlet XXL backed up Coolio's assertion, noting frequent instances of creatively spelled words in hip hop songs and titles, such as tru instead of true and muzik instead of music, among others. As Coolio went on to add (via Vice), news outlets like TMZ are simply misinformed about hip hop culture. "[T]hey don't know s*** about my culture and about my art and about where I'm coming from."
