Song #3: “Alright” by Kris Kross featuring Super Cat

 

Song #3: Kris Kross featuring Super Cat — “Alright”

1993

🎵 Today's Song

Kris Kross featuring Super Cat — “Alright”

Random draw

Selected era bucket: 1990–1999

• Verified remaining eligible population at draw: 9,204 recordings

• Selection method: Equal-probability era draw, then one uniform random draw from previously unselected eligible recordings in that era

Chart performance

• Overall pop peak: #19

• Billboard Hot 100: #19

• Other relevant Billboard pop charts: N/A

• Billboard R&B: #8

• Billboard Country: N/A

• UK Singles Chart: #47

• Yearly rank: #93

• Weeks charted: 19

• Weeks Top 20: 2

• Weeks Top 10: 0

• Weeks at peak: 2

“Alright” debuted on the Hot 100 at #33 on July 31, 1993, eventually reaching #19 for two consecutive weeks and spending 19 weeks on the chart.

Kris Kross at this point

• Charting record: 4th of 7 eventual Hot 100 hits

• Top-20 hit: 3rd of 4

• Top-10 hit: Not a Top-10 hit; Kris Kross had 1 eventual Top-10 hit

• #1 pop hit: Not a #1; Kris Kross had 1 eventual #1

• Previous Top-20: “Warm It Up”

• Next Top-20: “Tonite's tha Night” (#12)

“Alright” was the biggest Hot 100 hit from Kris Kross's second album, Da Bomb. They would return to the Top 20 once more with “Tonite's tha Night,” from their third album, Young, Rich & Dangerous, which reached #12 in 1995–96.

Retrospective standing

• GOAT overall: #8,488

• Among Kris Kross songs: #4 of 7

• Among Kris Kross Top-20 hits: #4 of 4

• GOAT points: 79,940

• Hot 100 portion of chart run: #19 peak, 19 weeks

By my retrospective ranking system, “Alright” is the lowest-ranked of Kris Kross's four Top-20 hits.

Record details

• Entered chart: July 31, 1993

• Released: July 13, 1993

• Recorded: 1992; exact session date/location not reliably established

• Single: “Alright” / “D.J. Nabs Break”

• Album: Da Bomb — Kris Kross's second album

• Songwriters: Jermaine Dupri and William “Super Cat” Maragh, with additional composition credits associated with sampled material

• Featured performer: Super Cat

• Running time: 4:04

• Label: Ruffhouse/Columbia

• Catalog number: Ruffhouse 77103

• Producer: Jermaine Dupri

• Recording to use: The original 1993 recording featuring Super Cat

Listen / watch / read

• 🎧 Original recording: Apple Music — “Alright”

• 📺 Official/original music video: Kris Kross — “Alright”

• 📝 Lyrics: “Alright” lyrics

Versions & title history

• Original or cover: Original Kris Kross song

• The recording prominently samples Slave's “Just a Touch of Love.”

• The single appeared in radio, LP, extended-remix and instrumental versions.

• Same-title unrelated chart hits: Numerous unrelated songs titled “Alright” exist and should not be confused with this recording.

Streaming note

There is some version risk because several legitimate 1993 mixes exist. For this project, the recording to hear is the 4:04 original/LP version featuring Super Cat.

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My Take

My rating: 32/100

There was something oddly appropriate about randomly landing on Kris Kross this early in the project. I lived in Atlanta from 1990 to 1992, so I was there right as Kris Kross became a phenomenon. I remember “Jump,” the backwards clothes, and how suddenly these two kids seemed to be everywhere.

What I didn't remember was just how young they were—or how quickly everything happened.

“Jump” reached #1 in 1992 and stayed there for eight weeks. About a year later, Kris Kross were already releasing their second album, Da Bomb. “Alright,” featuring Jamaican dancehall artist Super Cat, was its biggest Hot 100 hit, reaching #19.

And Kris Kross were fourteen years old.

That fact completely changed how I heard the song.

Fourteen Going on Eighteen

Watch the video for “Alright” without knowing their ages and I think you'd probably guess that Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly and Chris “Daddy Mac” Smith were somewhere around high-school graduation age. The clothes are different from the playful oversized backwards outfits of the first album. The presentation is tougher and more serious. They carry themselves like older teenagers.

Then you realize they're 14.

There's even a scene where somebody else is driving a car, Jermaine Dupri is riding in the passenger seat, and Kris Kross jump into the back. Once you know their ages, it's almost funny. The video is doing everything it can to present them as young men hanging out with their crew, while the mundane reality is that these guys aren't even old enough to drive.

That tension seems to define this period of Kris Kross.

The backwards-clothes gimmick had been enormously effective. It helped make two very young teenagers instantly recognizable and turned “Jump” into one of the biggest records of 1992. But it also had an expiration date. By the following year, they clearly wanted to be regarded as legitimate rappers rather than cute kids with a gimmick.

The problem was that they were still kids.

And “Alright” can't quite escape that contradiction.

Take Us Seriously — We Have School Tomorrow

The production and video are telling us that this is a more mature Kris Kross. The lyrics, however, sound remarkably like the lives of two 14-year-olds.

And I don't mean that as criticism.

Much of “Alright” is basically a slice of their lives at the time. They talk about school, fame, their fans and their neighborhood. They express appreciation for the people who support them and talk about wanting to present a positive example to the kids watching them.

It's all rather laudable.

More importantly, it's believable.

They even describe the peculiar pressure of trying to balance school with interviews and the demands of the music business. That makes the record sound less like an invented rap persona and more like two extraordinarily famous kids describing their actual circumstances.

Jermaine Dupri could have tried to establish their hip-hop credibility by having two 14-year-olds pretend to possess adult experiences they obviously didn't have. Instead, much of the material feels age appropriate.

That leaves Kris Kross in a nearly impossible position.

If they continue behaving like kids, they're reinforcing the idea that they're a kiddie novelty act.

If they pretend to be adults, nobody is going to believe them.

So “Alright” ends up making a rather unusual proposition:

We're still kids. We just don't want you to treat us like a kiddie act anymore.

Interestingly, contemporary critics were already noticing essentially the same dilemma. Reviews of the Da Bomb era frequently focused on Kris Kross trying to mature beyond the youthful image that had initially sold them while still being extremely young. “Alright” itself generally fared better with critics than the overall attempted transformation did.

An Astonishingly Compressed Career

The initial Kris Kross phenomenon cooled remarkably quickly.

Their first album, Totally Krossed Out, produced the enormous #1 “Jump,” followed by the #13 “Warm It Up.” After that, “I Missed the Bus” reached only #63.

Then came Da Bomb. “Alright” brought them back to #19, making it the biggest Hot 100 hit from the album. The next single, “I'm Real,” peaked at only #84.

They managed one more substantial comeback when “Tonite's tha Night,” from their third album, reached #12.

Still, the timeline is remarkable. Their three studio albums arrived in 1992, 1993 and 1996. Their recording career was essentially over while they were still teenagers.

That makes Da Bomb particularly fascinating. Kris Kross weren't simply suffering the usual sophomore-album problem. They were attempting to reinvent an enormously successful act whose original concept they had begun to outgrow almost immediately.

From Atlanta Rappers to “Southern Rap”

There's another historical angle here that I hadn't really considered before spending time with this song.

Kris Kross were an Atlanta rap act before Outkast released their first album.

I wouldn't call Kris Kross foundational to the Southern hip-hop sound in the way Outkast, Organized Noize and the Dungeon Family would become. Kris Kross seem more like rappers who happened to be from the South than what we would later specifically mean by Southern rappers.

Their music wasn't particularly interested in announcing its Southern identity.

But Kris Kross and Jermaine Dupri demonstrated something important before Outkast's national breakthrough: an Atlanta rapper working with an Atlanta producer could make an absolutely enormous national pop record.

Kris Kross were also foundational to Dupri's career. Their success preceded the creation of So So Def, which would become one of the defining Atlanta labels of the 1990s.

So “Alright” lands at a fascinating moment in Atlanta music history: after Atlanta had proved it could produce a gigantic hip-hop act, but just before the city began asserting a distinctive Southern hip-hop identity nationally.

Jermaine Dupri May Be the Star of This Record

The more I listened to “Alright,” the more I appreciated Jermaine Dupri's production.

I went to WhoSampled and listened separately to the recordings supplying the bass and drums. Hearing those ingredients on their own made me appreciate what Dupri did with them. In particular, the bass element from Slave's “Just a Touch of Love” gives “Alright” much of its musical personality.

Dupri doesn't merely drop an obvious old sample underneath Kris Kross. He takes elements from different sources and assembles them into a coherent 1993 hip-hop groove.

That's probably my favorite musical element of the record.

And Dupri isn't merely the producer. He is one of the principal songwriters as well. So this is very much a Jermaine Dupri construction.

That's particularly impressive considering Dupri himself was only around 20. He was trying to solve the central Kris Kross problem: how do you write credible material for two 14-year-old rappers who want to grow up without pretending they're already adults?

I think he handles that part reasonably well.

So Who Is Super Cat?

I knew virtually nothing about Super Cat before this.

William “Super Cat” Maragh was already an established Jamaican dancehall performer by the time he appeared on “Alright.” His presence wasn't simply an anonymous reggae voice added to make the chorus more colorful. He brought genuine dancehall credibility to a record made by two teenagers who were actively trying to establish their own credibility.

And there's a wonderful pop-history connection here.

Four years later, Super Cat appeared on Sugar Ray's “Fly.”

That record became vastly more ubiquitous in America than “Alright.” “Fly” spent four weeks at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart. But because it wasn't released as an eligible commercial single, the Billboard rules of the time prevented it from appearing on the actual Hot 100.

So if you're a '90s pop listener who doesn't recognize the name Super Cat, there's a decent chance you've heard him anyway.

I certainly knew “Fly.” I just never connected that voice with the guy singing alongside Kris Kross four years earlier.

That's exactly the kind of connection I hoped this project would uncover.

The Credibility Problem

There's one moment late in “Alright” that also tells us something about where Kris Kross were in 1993.

Daddy Mac takes what appears to be a shot at fellow teenage rap group Da Youngsta's with the line about those who “chose to pass the mic.” Da Youngsta's had a song called “Pass Da Mic” and were among the young rappers critical of Kris Kross's credibility, including the fact that they didn't write their own rhymes.

I find the response a little like punching down.

Kris Kross had just sold millions of records. Their commercial stature dwarfed that of the young rappers criticizing them.

But there's an important distinction.

Commercially, Kris Kross were punching down.

In terms of hip-hop credibility, they were defending the precise area where they were vulnerable.

The criticism that somebody isn't a legitimate rapper because somebody else writes their rhymes still exists today. And Kris Kross couldn't really answer it by pointing to authorship. Jermaine Dupri was deeply involved in writing their material, including “Alright.”

So saying we sell more records than you doesn't really answer you don't write your own rhymes.

Both statements can be true.

It's another manifestation of the central problem surrounding this record. Kris Kross possessed enormous pop credibility but were trying to establish something different: credibility as MCs.

You can't accomplish that simply by putting your clothes on forwards.

The Song Itself Is Just...Alright

After all of this, I find the circumstances surrounding “Alright” considerably more interesting than the song itself.

Structurally, there's just not much happening.

It's basically a series of Kris Kross verses alternating with Super Cat's chorus. There's no conventional bridge and no major musical departure. Super Cat's presence gives the record welcome textural variation, but structurally the song remains extremely linear.

Once you've heard the basic verse/chorus combination, you've essentially heard the musical vocabulary the record is going to use.

And then it reaches the end and seems almost unsure how to finish.

Super Cat keeps the chorus/vamp going, adds some ad-libs and laughter, and the record eventually fades away. It feels less like a deliberate conclusion than everyone continued performing until somebody decided where to turn down the volume.

The ending is especially incongruous because the rest of the record is working so hard to establish this more serious Kris Kross. Then Super Cat is laughing and vamping while the whole thing slowly disappears.

The record doesn't really end.

It runs out.

That's unfortunate because there's plenty here that's perfectly competent. I like the groove. I appreciate Dupri's sample construction. Super Cat adds personality. The lyrics are positive without becoming preachy, and the subject matter seems remarkably appropriate for who Kris Kross actually were at the time.

I don't dislike any of it.

I just don't find much of it memorable.

And that may ultimately have been the problem with this stage of Kris Kross. “Jump” had an instantly recognizable hook, sound, look and concept. Everything reinforced everything else.

“Alright” deliberately strips away some of that novelty in an attempt to establish a more mature identity.

But it doesn't replace the novelty with anything equally distinctive.

That leaves us with a perfectly decent 1993 hip-hop record—and a much more interesting historical artifact.

32/100

It's better than Nigel Olsson's “Dancin' Shoes,” but if “Alright” never happens to come on the radio again, I'm probably going to be alright with that.