Story highlights
NEW: Autopsy shows no signs of trauma or foul play
Woman told police Kelly had taken heroin and cocaine Tuesday night
He died Wednesday at an Atlanta hospital
Kris Kross topped the charts with "Jump" in 1992
Atlanta-area authorities are investigating the death of Chris Kelly, half of the 1990s rap duo Kris Kross, as a possible drug overdose, Fulton County Police Cpl. Kay Lester said Thursday.
Kelly, 34, died Wednesday at an Atlanta hospital after he was found unresponsive at his home, police said.
After paramedics took him to the hospital, a woman who identified herself as Kelly’s friend told an investigator that Kelly had taken a mixture of heroin and cocaine Tuesday night, and that she had brought Kelly home “to recover from his drug use,” according to a police report.
Betty Honey, with the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office, said that an autopsy showed no signs of trauma or foul play.
A toxicology report is expected to be complete in three to four weeks, at which point, a cause of death will likely be determined, she said.
Kelly, together with Chris Smith, shot to stardom in 1992 with “Jump,” which spent eight weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100.
A #TBT in honor of Chris Kelly
The duo opened for Michael Jackson that year on his Dangerous World Tour.
Their penchant for wearing their clothes backward was, at least for a time, widely emulated.
“I’m wearing my clothes to work backwards tomorrow,” Michael Skolnik, edito-in-chief of the hip hop site Global Grind said, when he learned of the death.
Leslie Tookes, a CNN project coordinator, lived next door to Kelly. Like others, she was saddened by his untimely death.
“We often heard him playing classical music and the piano,” Tookes said. “He was a low-key type of person who was very talented and courteous, friendly and wonderful to our 5-year-old twins.
“Indeed, gone too soon.”
His family also mentioned the notable wardrobe adjustment in a statement mourning Kelly’s passing.
“To millions of fans worldwide, he was the trendsetting, backwards pants-wearing one-half of Kris Kross who loved making music. But to us, he was just Chris – the kind, generous and fun-loving life of the party,” Kelly’s family said in a statement.
People we lost in 2013: The lives they lived
Discovered at a mall
Kelly and Smith were 13-year-olds when they were discovered in 1991 at an Atlanta mall by producer Jermaine Dupri.
Going by the stage name Mac Daddy (with Smith known as Daddy Mac), the pair followed up their smash “Jump” with the single “Warm It Up.”
Together, the songs pushed their debut album, “Totally Krossed Out,” to multiplatinum status.
Next came 1993’s “Da Bomb.”
But the album failed to find the following of the duo’s debut, in large part because the boys had hit puberty and they were marketed with a tougher image.
Their career never again reached the heights of their debut, but they continued to make music.
In 1996, the duo released the album “Young, Rich and Dangerous.”
The pair reunited for one night in February for a 20th anniversary party for Dupri’s So So Def label.
Rapper Da Brat, who also performed that night, wrote about Kelly’s death, “REST IN PEACE TO MY LIL BRO CHRIS KELLY OF KRIS KROSS. Dam wasn’t we JUST at rehearsal and doin a So So Def20 show?”
CNN’s Ed Payne, Chelsea Carter, Jason Hanna, Chuck Johnston and Tresha Lindo contributed to this report.
