Last summer, the Faroe Islands — a remote archipelago populated by puffin and sheep in the middle of the Norwegian Sea — was a “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

“The arrival of these two names doesn’t make my fingers tingle,” someone wrote on faroe-island.blogspot.com. “But I hope they’ll enjoy their stay, and that a lot of people will go and listen to them.”

Coolio, a one-hit wonder when “Gangsta’s Paradise” made a splash in 1995, launched his career more than a quarter century ago in 1979, but he and other D-list rappers are finding lucrative opportunities in the most unlikely venues overseas.