Kris Kross
Two Atlanta kids in backwards clothes spent eight weeks at No. 1 with "Jump" — at 13, charting at an age no hip-hop group had matched. For one glorious stretch of 1992, half the playgrounds in America turned their jeans around.
Jermaine Dupri was an 18-year-old producer walking through Atlanta's Greenbriar Mall in 1990 when he spotted Chris Kelly and Chris Smith — best friends since first grade who, by Dupri's own account, weren't rappers and weren't looking to be. He was struck by their style, signed them as the first act on his So So Def label, and built them into Mac Daddy and Daddy Mac. Their debut album, Totally Krossed Out, released March 31, 1992, and produced entirely by Dupri, went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold four million copies in the US.
"Jump" was the engine. It spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 — the longest-running chart-topper since The Police's "Every Breath You Take" — and along the way it kept Queen's re-charting "Bohemian Rhapsody," En Vogue's "My Lovin'," and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" stuck at No. 2. The single went double platinum, and the duo were about 13 years old, charting at an age no hip-hop group had matched for commercial success. Then there were the clothes: everything worn backwards — jeans, jerseys, the whole silhouette — a signature look kids across America immediately copied, to the despair of anyone who had to walk in them. 1992 kept escalating: a spot on Michael Jackson's European Dangerous World Tour, a cameo in Jackson's "Jam" video, and a closing-act performance on In Living Color that May.
Da Bomb (1993) and Young, Rich & Dangerous (1996) both reached the Billboard top 20, but the phenomenon had a shelf life, and the duo faded from the charts as the decade wore on. Chris Kelly died of a drug overdose on May 1, 2013, at 34, mourned by the generation that had jumped along with him. The peak still belongs to them: two kids who made the whole culture move — backwards.
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