Following Kriss Kross rapper Chris Kelly's death, mentor Jermaine Dupri says he would have stepped in if he had known the severity of the situation.
Kelly passed away on May 1 at the young age of 34, found dead in his Atlanta home of an apparent drug overdose. He was rushed to the hospital, but pronounced dead soon after. He was said to have been using cocaine and heroin the night before.
Dupri worked closely with Kelly and fellow Kriss Kross rapper Chris Smith in the early 90's. He told Us Weekly, "If I would have known, I would have tried to put my foot forward to help the situation. I'm hearing about this just like everybody else and I'm not really too believing of all of it, but at the same time, I can't say that I didn't know. I wasn't there to know about it and I hate it because I feel like if there were people around and knew about it, then they should have waved the flag."
Dupri added that Kelly was the Justin Bieber of his day, "just a natural kid, like a person that you want to be around at all times because he would never not want to be doing anything."
Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins of the girl group TLC were close friends of Kelly as well, stating that they used to hang out at his house and that he was a "regular cool teenage boy."
Michael Mauldin, Dupri's father, also chimed in, stating that Kelly's death was not only a tragedy for the rapper's friends and family, but a huge blow to the music community in general. "I've gotten emails and texts of people … with their shirts and pants on backwards," he told Us. "That just shows the impact these kids had on the nation."
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