Last night, hip-hop lost another rapper to the streets. Lionel
"Chinx" Pickenswas shot and killed in Queens, New York. He was 31
years old.
Chinx was one of the many rappers who wanted to leave the
tumultuous street life of Far Rockaway, Queens, and flourish as a superstar in
hip-hop. While he ended up becoming a visible member of French
Montana’s Coke Boys crew, Chinx’s early beginnings were with a group
called Riot Squad. “That’s where I started out.
Me, Bino, Cau2Gs, and Stack
Bundles,” he
once told me in an interview for XXL. Back in high school, he was
rapping for fun with his friends—one of them being his childhood homie
Stacks—and started taking it seriously when his mixtapes were getting positive
responses from the neighborhood. Along with his boys, they formed Riot Squad
and began building a buzz as a unit until Chinx was locked up for nearly five
years at Mid-State Correctional Facility for robbery and drug charges.
When he was released in 2008, Bundles was gone. He was gunned
down a year before, and Chinx learned about losing his friend while he was
still locked up.
Instead of being discouraged, it motivated him to make it in
hip-hop. Hitting up the block again, Chinx built his buzz through a series of
Riot Squad releases—Hurry Up and Die Vol. 1, Vol. 2, and Vol.
3—before associating himself with another rapper on the rise: French
Montana. “When I got incarcerated, Jim Joneswanted to work with
Stack. So, they formed a crew called the Byrd Gang, which was Stack Bundles, Max
B, and Jim Jones,” he said in the same XXL interview of
transitioning from Riot Squad to Coke Boys. “So when I came home, Stack passed
away and Max B was still home fighting his murder case and shit. Max B sought
after me. One of his homies saw me in the club when I went to see Max. Stack
knew Max and Max knew French. That’s how I met French, at Max B’s house. Max B
is serving 75 years now, but me and French just continued to keep working.
That’s how we formed the Coke Boys and just kept banging.”
Chinx was often added as a guest appearance on
Montana’s mixtapes, differentiating himself from Flip, Cheeze, Charlie
Rock, and the rest with his honest rhymes about the harsh situations
he’d seen coming up. When Chinx signed to Coke Boys in 2011, he started to
build his own foundation outside of Montana’s shadow with his Harry
Fraud-produced Flight 2011 (a tape he
stated was a proper introduction to his catalog) and his now respected
mixtape series,Cocaine Riot. “Street Superhero” is
still my theme music.
His slow road to fame kicked into high gear when Montana
took him on Drake’s Club Paradise Tour in 2012. During this time,
fans saw him come into his own when he was prominently featured on Coke
Boys 3. After that tape dropped, he followed up with his biggest
single to date, “I’m a Coke Boy,” which was the de facto Coke Boys anthem, off Cocaine
Riot 2. The success of the street record spawned a major remix with Diddy, Rick
Ross, and his mentor, Montana. Sequential releases in 2013 and 2014—Cocaine
Riot 3 and Coke Boys 4—saw Chinx as the seasoned veteran
in Coke Boys as new members came along.
I met Chinx back in 2013 during my time at XXL. He
was promoting a new marketable image, where he was literally wiping away the
“Drugz” part of his name and just going by his mononym, Chinx. He was
gearing up to release his I’ll Take It From Here EP, which
contained his regional smash “Feelings.” After our initial interview, I heard
his EP at a private listening session held at Bellucci Napoli in Midtown
Manhattan, where I witnessed first-hand a different side of him gaining
acceptance in the mainstream. Coke Boys (minus French, who was out of town at
the time) came through to show their support. It was cool and sleek, but he
still carried a tough persona that catered to his day-one fans.
To me, Chinx was a genuine person who knew the perfect
balance of professionalism and friendship. We kept in touch over the next
couple of years, texting each other to talk about things we were working on and
just to say what’s up. I always want to co-sign artists I really believe in,
and Chinx was one of them, a talented, humble guy who would hit you up just to
say thanks. “Yo E thank u for comin out brother. I appreciate that look
wit u there,” he texted to me after his Cocaine Riot 4 listening.
My most recent encounter with him was at Up & Down last
April. Ja Rule was billed to make an appearance. A lot of dope people were
there. Randomly, I ran into Chinx and his manager, Biggs, and we exchanged
contacts because he got a new number. If you really knew Chinx, he was all
about calling his boys “fools.” When we greeted each other with that, I knew we
reached a level where it was friends first and business second. Just like the
many others who paid homage to Chinx after hearing of his death today, I will
forever remember his contributions to the game.
Rest in peace, fool. Gone but not forgotten.
Eric Diep is a writer living in New York. Follow him @E_Diep.
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