‘Rapper Coolio Snubbed Me!’ Transgender Porn Star Claims

CYBERSPACE—Hip-hop recording artist Artis Leon Ivey Jr.—better known as Coolio—is, at least according to himself, staging a run a for vice president of the United States on a ticket topped by porn performer Cheris DeVille. But the “Gangsta’s Paradise” rapper may find that his nascent political career has hit an early speedbump after an alleged snub of a transgender porn performer, because he “is not tryin to have that image.” Read AVN.com’s most recent coverage of the Cherie DeVille/Coolio presidential campaign at this link.  By joining the DeVille ticket, Coolio affirmed his enthusiasm for porn performers. But according to Lena Kelly, the 28-year-old star of Hot For Transsexuals 4 as well as the Shemale Strokers series and numerous other videos over the past two years, the rapper first invited her and then coldly ejected her from a Las Vegas concert by rap trio Naughty By Nature, who enjoyed a wave of popularity in the early 1990s. Kelly first mentioned the incident on her Twitter account on March 19, the day after she alleges that the incident took place. But earlier this week, Kelly elaborated on what she says was her painful encounter with the now-VP candidate to the New York Post’s Page Six gossip section. “I was like, ‘This is really cool. I remember Coolio from when I was a kid,'” she told Page Six scribe Francesca Bacardi. “I wasn’t even fucking him or anything. That wasn’t on my mind.” But when she arrived at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas to meet her onetime idol, Kelly told the 54-year-old rapper, whose breakthrough hit was the 1994 single “Fantastic Voyage,” that she was transgender. At that point, the evening suddenly took a downward turn. “He literally, without even saying a word, went over to his boys, had a little huddle and one of his boys comes back to me and goes, ‘Coolio is not trying to have that image. He says you got to go.’” Kelly told Page Six. Kelly added that the Coolio crony added, ominously, that she should leave immediately because, “I don’t want things to turn physical.” A spokesperson for Coolio, however, denied that the incident took place at all, and even implied that Kelly’s account was part of an attempt to smear the onetime rap star. “That never happened,” said the spokesperson, whom Page Six identified as Coolio’s manager. “[Coolio] knows lots of porn stars and spoken out numerous of times that he has no problems with LGBT community and has friends and family that’s LGBT. Sadly this person has come forward nine months later from this alleged incident to demean his character.”