HANGOUTS : Whooping Coif

“Soul Train” is blaring on the TV set, so it must be Saturday--a busy day at Whoop De Doo Hair Designs. With its walls covered in thumb-tacked pages from hair magazines, its faux wood decor and its North Long Beach location, Whoop De Doo is no seddity hair salon. It’s an old-school beauty shop, the kind of place where the entire neighborhood seems to pass through, selling chicken dinners or telling local tales.

But that’s the feel on the inside. On the outside, Whoop De Doo oozes hip-hop flava. A peach hue livens the drab concrete exterior and the riotous colors of the spray-painted graffiti-style sign make it vibrate like neon.

The division makes sense. Coolio, the rapper with the braids that frame his head like sun rays, is the money man behind Whoop De Doo. Inside, though, Deme Davis rules. She’s the shop’s manager and the fiance of Spoon, who works for Coolio’s management company. She’s perming the hair of a squirming 6-year-old Brandi, Coolio’s daughter. Dimp, Coolio’s girlfriend, looks on while the rapper’s son, Artis III, his hair also an array of miniature sun rays, amuses himself.

Meanwhile, Coolio, whose “Fantastic Voyage” was a Grammy nominee this year, is in a studio somewhere. The shop, he says, “is straight business for me”--and a good one. He’s planning to open another salon, either Whoop De Doo Hollywood or, simply, Whoop De Doo Two, a hip-hop head shop, “maybe next year or after the summer.”

Although no coiffeur, Coolio does appreciate a fine ‘do, citing the Naughty by Nature crew and their company. “The whole Illtown posse,” he says, “has dope braids.” As for his own style, it’s a look he’s cultivated for five or six years now. He says he can even see himself growing old with it, baldness be damned. “I’ll probably have braids on the side since my hair will be gone at the top.”