The avoidable tragedy of Kris Kross [May 24, 1992]
Plus: Shut Up and Dance, The Cure, Wilson Phillips, and Stereolab
Greetings, Time Travellers! š Welcome back to the week of May 24, 1992.
š° In the news this week: the UK government throws a fit when 20,000 new age travellers host the Castlemorton Common Festival, which is the biggest illegal rave in British history.
š½ļøNew films in the cinema include Sean Connery as Medicine Man and Armand Assante in The Mambo Kings.
šŗOn TV, itās a big moment in the States as Johnny Carson steps down as host of The Tonight Show, handing over the reins to Jay Leno.
š¶ Number One song in the UK Top 40 is still āPlease Donāt Goā by K.W.S. But this week, letās listen toā¦
This weekās Number 4: āJumpā ā Kris Kross
In 2013, gossip site TMZ published a short video clip obtained through dubious means.
The video is two minutes of handheld iPhone footage, showing a party in a plush house.
No. āPartyā is the wrong word. This video was shot long after the real party died out. This is the post-party, or post-post-party. A half-dozen or so stalwarts are gathered around a kitchen table, all of them slurring and dazed, as the dawn light creeps through the curtains.
If youāve ever been in this situation, youāll instantly recognise the vibe. These people arenāt here because theyāre having fun. Theyāre here because they canāt remember the way home.
TMZ have blanked out every face in this video, except one. A handsome man, youthful if not young. The camera gets right in his face until heās all we can see.
And, although heās just as wasted as everyone else, this man seems to transform when heās the centre of attention. He starts rapping and dancing along to the music playing in the background.
Some people are natural stars. This guy is one of them.
And then he seems to fade out again. He loses the thread of the song, loses interest in the camera, and wanders back to the dying embers of the party.
The cameraman keeps rolling, turning his attention to a collection of gold and platinum discs on the wall. Each disc has an engraved plaque that details the achievement behind the award. One reads: to Chris Kelly for selling 500,000 copies of the album Totally Krossed Out.
Within a few hours of this video, Chris Kelly would be dead, killed by a lethal cocktail of cocaine and heroin. He died on April 29, 2013, exactly 21 years after āJumpā was top of the Billboard Hot 100.
Itās really tempting to draw a line from A to B here.
A kid becomes the biggest rapper in the world at 13. He dies at 34 after a long struggle with drug addiction. These two events must surely be connected. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
But Iām having trouble finding reliable sources about what really happened behind the scenes with Kris Kross. Iāve heard gossip about them having substance abuse issues during the āJumpā era, when they were still in their early teens. There are widespread rumours of sexual exploitation. However, nobody seems to have ever gone on the record about any of this, so we donāt know for sure.
Hereās what we do know. In 1991, an Atlanta-based producer Jermaine Dupri was managing a group called Silk Tymes Leather. He and the band were shopping at a mall when two kids approached and asked for autographs. Those kids were Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly and Chris "Daddy Mac" Smith.
Jermaine Dupri was himself something of a child prodigy. He had been hustling his way up the Atlanta music scene ever since he was 10, when he managed to wrangle his way onstage to dance with Diana Ross. He was only 19 years old in 1991 but was already establishing himself as a powerbroker on the Atlanta scene.
Dupri immediately saw something in these two kids. Although Smith and Kelly had never performed before, he signed them on the spot and began constructing the Kris Kross brand.
Dupri was inspired by another group of teen rappers that had made it big. Another Bad Creation, a group consisting of six kids aged 6 to 12 who had a big hit in 1990 with the song āIeshaā, making a lot of money for their manager, Michael āBiv from Bell Biv DeVoeā Bivens.
Another Bad Creation (or ABC) had a tacky gimmick of wearing their clothes inside-out. Kris Kross took the piss out of this a little by wearing their clothes back-to-front. In the first verse of their first single, Chris āMac Daddyā Kelly raps:
Don't try to compare us to Another Bad little fad
⦠cause inside out, it's wiggida wiggida wiggida wack
Yes, thatās right. āJumpā is, in part, a diss track. This was possibly the only hip-hop beef where most of the belligerents had a 9pm bedtime.
Kris Krossās first single, āJumpā completely surpassed anything ABC ever did. For a moment, Kris Kross eclipsed every other rapper, including all of the grown-ups in hip-hop.
In Stereogumās retrospective of this song, Tom Breihan makes an interesting point about how most mainstream rap hits before āJumpā were either pop songs with rap elements (āSet Adrift on Memory Blissā) or processed, sanitised garbage (āIce Ice Babyā).
But, while Kris Kross was a novelty band, the song āJumpā is itself not a novelty song. It is a proper rap song. Breihan goes on to say:
Kris Krossā debut single and only #1 hit was, in its time, the most credible version of rap music that had ever made its way to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. In its time and for many years afterwards, āJumpā was also the biggest rap hit of all time.
At age 13, Kris Kross were at the top of the rap game. They went on a wild ride that included a cameo in a Michael Jackson video, a terrible video game, and a commercial for Sprite.
But there was no big follow-up hit. Their second album did okay. The third album flopped. And then it was over. By the time Smith and Kelly were 18, they were has-beens.
Itās hard for faded celebs to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. How does someone live with that feeling when theyāre still just a kid?
āJumpā is a great song.
The beat is built on ten different samples, ranging from 'I Want You Backā by Jackson 5 to āI Could Just Kill a Manā by Cypress Hill. Smith and Kelly are slick, confident rappers. They got bars, as todayās young people might say.
But listening to it again makes me think about something weāve discussed a lot recently: the way celebrity can sometimes be a form of human sacrifice.
Thatās doubly true in the case of child stars. Consider, for example, Drew Barrymore. In 1992, Barrymore was at the peak of her wild years, with tabloids and late-night talk show hosts fixated on her drinking, drug abuse and promiscuity. Around the time of āJumpā, she posed naked for Interview magazine, cementing her good-girl-gone-bad image.
In 1992, Drew Barrymore was 17 years old. Just four years older than Kris Kross.
We werenāt good at protecting kids in the 1990s. Are we better these days? The current boom in Family Vloggers on YouTube says otherwise. Personally, I think thereās only one cast-iron solution:
Ban child celebrities.
All of them. No exceptions.
In most countries, there are laws that prevent the media from publishing any details about juvenile criminals. You canāt print their names, their pictures, or even include any details that might allow them to be identified.
Letās extend this to all children. Make everyone grow up in a state of total anonymity until they turn 18. No child actors. No child athletes. No child rappers.
We, as a society, have evolved beyond the need for famous children. We can get grown-ups play the part of teenagers. In the recent Celine Dion biopic, Aline, the 6-year old Dion is played by 58-year old ValƩrie Lemercier. People said that it was weird and creepy, but is it really weirder and creepier than watching a genuine 6-year old? A kid who should be outside, playing with her friends? Why should she sacrifice her childhood for our entertainment?
Just ban them. Ban all children from the media.
Weāve spent the last few weeks talking about the horror of being famous. We canāt protect kids from all the horrors of the world, but we can save them from this one.
Elsewhere in the charts
Number 2 (New Entry): āRaving Iām Ravingā ā Shut Up And Dance
āRaving Iām Ravingā is a kind of rave parody of Marc Cohenās 1991 hit, āWalking In Memphisā, with all the lyrics changed to be about going to a sweaty club.
Just one problem: they forgot to get clearance from Marc Cohen. His lawyers were immediately on the blower to Shut Up And Dance, and the DJs agreed to not press any further copies of the single after the initial run.
Word got out about the legal situation, causing a surge of demand as ravers snapped up the single before it was deleted. The single went rocketing up the charts, very nearly deposing K.W.S. from the top spot.
This is ironic as hell because the original āWalking In Memphisā peaked at Number 22. Therefore, Marc Cohenās lawyers are better at boosting record sales than Marc Cohenās publicists.
Number 8 (ā from 31): āFriday Iām In Loveā ā The Cure
We covered this in-depth in our review of the album Wish. The only thing to add here is that the lyrics are thematically quite similar to The Beautiful Southās āSong for Whoeverā.
Also, if you havenāt already seen Robert Smithās interview when inducted into the RockānāRoll Hall of Fame, you should treat yourself and watch it now:

Number 15 (New Entry): āBack to the Old Schoolā ā Bassheads
Quick question: what do you consider āold schoolā? For The Bassheads, āold schoolā probably meant 1982 to 1988, or thereabouts. Basically, beats that were around five to ten years old.
So, if todayās generation were to make a song about āthe old schoolā, they would be talking about music from 2018.
Number 19 (ā from 18): āYou Wonāt See Me Cryā ā Wilson Phillips
Gen Z areāquite rightlyāfascinated and enraged by celebrities with famous parents. They call these second-generation celebrities āNepo Babiesā, in reference to the nepotism behind their success.
To be fair, Nepo Babies arenāt guaranteed success unless they can bring some genuine talent to the table. Just look at Will Smithās kids: the very talented Willow is making a name for herself, while the talent-avoidant Jaden has become a punchline.
I wonder what would Gen Z make of Wilson Phillips, all of whom are children of pop royalty? They are Nepo Babies, for sure, but they were also the queens of tight harmonies. Even when the song is a bit meh (like this one), theyāre always nice to listen to.
Number 24 (New Entry): āRich and Strangeā ā Cud
1992 is filled with songs that would have been much bigger hits in 1995. This is very much one of them. An extremely catchy bit of indie pop with unusual, unforgettable vocals.
Album of the Week
Peng! ā Stereolab
In 1986, NME gave away a free cassette that would shake the world of indie. That cassette was titled C86 and contained some of the most exciting alternative artists in Britain at the time. Or, it was a bunch of shambling, self-indulgent jangle-pop nonsense, depending on how you feel about this kind of sound. Either way, NME were trying to celebrate (and lay claim to) the true spirit of indie.
McCarthy were one of those C86 bands, notable for their swooning melodies and overtly Marxist lyrics (āRed Sleeping Beautyā is the probably best song about a Communist revolution since āThe Internationaleā.)
The third McCarthy album featured French vocalist Laetita Sadlier, who was in a relationship with guitarist Tim Gane. McCarthy broke up in 1990, and Sadlier and Gane went off to form their own group, called Stereolab.
Stereolab are a band that far more people have heard of than actually heard, which makes them the natural torchbearers of the C86 spirit. And their debut album, Peng!, does contain echoes of the old indie days while working hard to expand our concept of what alternative music is.
Title track āPeng!33ā is a good place to start, with a heavy, melodic guitar line that sounds a bit like McCarthy, while Sadlier assures us that āmagical things are happening in this worldā:
The indie disco feeling pops up elsewhere too. āStomachwormā sees Stereolab make a rare foray into glam rock, while āThe Seeming and The Meaningā almost sounds like Elastica:
But this is not a McCarthy album. All of the things we associate with Stereolabākrautrock, Nico-esque vocals, tropicalia, weird old synthesizers, and the general vibe that weāre listening to the soundtrack of a lost art movieāare present right from the opening track:
By the end of the record, all of the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place. The 7-minute epic āSurrealchemistā is a song that couldnāt have been made by any other band:
Itās probably misleading to say that Stereolab were fully formed on their debut album, because Iām not sure that Stereolab have ever been fully formed. This is a band that once said, "to be unique was more important than to be good." Stereolab have always been on a journey, experimenting and innovating and restlessly following their muse.
That journey starts here. Peng! is a hard album to pin down within its 47-ish minutes. Itās a record with a hyperactive soul, always ready to run headlong in pursuit of the next idea that seems halfway interesting.
That, I think, is the true spirit of indie.
Next Week
The Take That era begins in earnest, and nothing will ever be the same again.
Have you ever thought of doing mixtapes as well putting the videos in the newsletter? That would be most excellent.
Only the early 90s could've given us Kris Kross, Stereolab, and Gary Barlow. What a bonkers few years that was...