After being busted with crack at Los Angeles International Airport, Coolio has pled not guilty to charges of drug possession and battery. The rapper, who was named Artis Leon Ivey by his mother, entered his plea on Friday at an arraignment in Los Angeles.

Last month little Artis was arrested at LAX for carting around crack in his suitcase. Oh, and he also attempted to assault – or at least stop – the worker who was searching his bag. He was charged with felony cocaine possession, as well as slapped with a couple of misdemeanors: possession of drug paraphernalia and battery (he grabbed the screener’s arm in an attempt to thwart the drugs from being found in his luggage).

Coolio, of “Gangsta’s Paradise” and (bad) reality television fame, is currently not incarcerated, thanks to bail.

He will be reappearing in court on April 20, unless he goes all DMX on us.

Not really sure if the whole crack thing actually gives Coolio street cred, or just makes him look like even more of a has-been. I’m going to go with the latter; even Whitney Houston knows the truth about crack, as she so eloquently discussed in an interview with Diane Sawyer:

“Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack; let’s get that straight. We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is whack.”