Thank Kid 'n Play For Propelling Will Smith's Acting Superstardom

In an exclusive interview with HipHopDX, Chris "Kid" Reid from Kid 'n Play opened up about his duo's biggest career mistake and it has to do with "The Fresh Prince."

Premiering in fall 1990, Kid 'n Play had a cartoon series on NBC. They were actually with first rap artists to have this. However, it only ran for one season. Weeks later, Will Smith's "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" began airing on the same network. In the sit-down with DX, Kid explained that the duo also had a second series that they were working on with NBC, when everything crumbled. 

"What went down at the time was that we got the cartoon series first with NBC — first rappers to ever have a cartoon,” Kid explained. “We also had a sitcom deal with NBC at the same time, and we were developing that. This was before [The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air] was on the air. So we were heading down that road, developing it with producers, about to hire people, this, that and the third, and then NBC came at us and said, 'We still want to do the sitcom,' and they also said, 'But, we want to cancel the cartoon series.'"

In fact, the network was phasing out all cartoon shows. Well, Kid 'n Play felt disappointment about this because they loved cartoons every since they were kids. So, the rap duo gave NBC an ultimatum that they would regret to this day.

"So we told them, and this is probably one of the dumber things we ever did, 'We don’t want to do no night show with you. We don’t want to do no sitcom. If you cancel that cartoon, then you cancel us, we’ll go elsewhere,' the rapper turned voiceover talent revealed. "(Laughs) So that slot for that show ended being the same slot for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. That’s how that goes. They moved on, and they put Will in that spot. We made a mistake and took it too personal.”

And the rest was Fresh Prince history...

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