Kris Kross
American hip hop group
Kris Kross was an American hip hop duo composed of rappers Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly and Chris "Daddy Mac" Smith and formed by record producer Jermaine Dupri. They were the youngest hip-hop group to gain commercial success, charting releases by the age of 13. Smith and Kelly were discovered by Dupri in 1990, with whom they signed as the first act on his record label So So Def Recordings.
The duo saw national recognition with their 1992 debut single, "Jump", which sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks and received double platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). They released three studio albums; their first, Totally Krossed Out (1992), peaked atop the US Billboard 200, while their second and third, Da Bomb (1993) and Young, Rich & Dangerous (1996), both entered the top 20. The duo were also noted for their signature fashion style of backward attire. Kelly died of a drug overdose on May 1, 2013.
History
The friendship of Atlanta, Georgia, natives James Christopher Kelly (August 11, 1978 – May 1, 2013) and Christopher Smith (born January 10, 1979), began in first grade. The duo was discovered at Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta in 1990 by then-18-year-old Jermaine Dupri. According to Dupri, Kelly and Smith were not pursuing a record deal and were not rappers or musicians when he met them.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kris Kross” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.