Kid of Kid ‘n Play Urges Health Awareness After Heart Transplant

Christopher “Kid” Reid got a heart transplant after doctors told him it was his only chance to live.

The Kid ‘n Play rapper went on Good Morning America to talk about his health scare for the first time. Kid said he started feeling tired and short of breath last summer, but thought he was just getting older.

“I think sometimes you kinda just chalk it up to, you know, ‘I’m gettin’ older,’ you know, ‘The road is harsh,’” Kid told GMA co-anchor Michael Strahan.

But his symptoms got worse. Kid went to the emergency room in July and doctors diagnosed him with congestive heart failure.

Doctors gave Kid medication first. But three weeks later, he came back to his cardiologist, Dr. Erika Jones, still swollen up.

“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,” Jones told GMA.

Jones ran more blood tests that night instead of letting Kid fly across the country for a show. The results were bad.

“The blood work confirmed my suspicion. It showed that his heart was failing, and it was starting to affect his other organs,” Jones said.

Kid got a call hours later telling him to go to the emergency room right away. Doctors rushed him to the ICU and put him on the heart transplant waiting list.

Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Laura Dichiacchio said Kid needed the transplant because it was “a kind of life or death situation.”

The rap star only waited eight days. He got the call that a heart was available and would be ready the next evening. The surgery took seven hours.

Now Kid wants other people, especially people of color, to take their health seriously and see doctors when something feels wrong.

“A lot of times, we don’t go because we don’t want the bad news, or we too busy just hustlin’, trying to make it from day to day,” Kid said. “And we…feel like we don’t got time, or we’ll get over it. Well, you might not.”

Kid isn’t the first major Hip-Hop star to get a heart transplant. Kurtis Blow had the same surgery in December 2020 after dealing with heart failure.

Blow had been having heart problems for years before his transplant. He had several surgeries in 2019 to repair arteries to his heart. But his condition got worse and doctors said he needed a new heart to survive.

The Hip-Hop legend got his transplant on December 6, 2020, in Los Angeles. He was 61 years old at the time. Kurtis Blow made a full recovery and returned to performing in The Hip Hop Nutcracker.

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