Christopher “Kid” Reid may be a kid at heart, but after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure and undergoing transplant surgery, he was reminded that he no longer has the heart of a kid — and now, he’s speaking out to remind his older fans to take care of themselves.
In an interview with Good Morning America on Thursday (Feb. 5), the Kid ‘N Play rapper opened up for the first time about a bout of health issues he recently experienced. It all started last summer, when Reid began experiencing symptoms such as fatigue and shortness of breath, but didn’t realize they were signs of a serious issue at first.
“I think sometimes you kinda just chalk it up to, you know, ‘I’m gettin’ older,’” Reid told GMA‘s Michael Strahan. “The road is harsh.”
In July, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, which the Mayo Clinic describes as occurring “when when the heart muscle doesn’t pump blood as well as it should.” His symptoms got so bad that he went to the ER to get checked out. He received medication to treat it, but three weeks later, his bloodwork showed that he needed heart transplant surgery.
“He came in very swollen again, and that is a little unusual in somebody who’s been started on treatment, for the swelling to come back that quickly,” his cardiologist, Dr. Erika Jones at Cedars-Sinai, told GMA.
Nine days after his doctors placed him on the organ waitlist, he learned he’d be getting a new heart. The next night, Reid underwent surgery.
“[It’s] a beautiful life,” he told GMA of his outlook post-surgery. “It’s great. And, you know, I wanna be around for it.”
“A lot of times, we don’t go [to doctor appointments] because we don’t want the bad news, or we too busy just hustlin’, trying to make it from day to day,” he added. “And we … feel like we don’t got time, or we’ll get over it. Well, you might not.”
Reid and his Kid ‘N Play partner, Christopher “Play” Martin, were one of the defining rap groups of the ’80s and ’90s, charting three albums on the Billboard 200. The duo’s biggest mainstream hit was 1991’s “Ain’t Gonna Hurt Nobody,” which reached No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100, but the duo also scored a number of hits on the hip-hop charts; “Funhouse” topped the Hot Rap Songs tally in 1990, while “Rollin’ With Kid ‘N Play” reached No. 2 the year prior.
In 2023, Billboard named Kid ‘N Play on its list of the 50 greatest rap groups of all time.
Watch Reid’s interview with Good Morning America above.
