According to Complex Rappers’ legacies never really die if they leave the right things behind. Once rappers pass, their mixtapes, albums, and leaked material allow listeners to keep their memories alive. For fans who still blast 2Pac or Biggie wherever they go, it’s the music that allows them to resurrect the fallen legends and relive their glory days all over again.
This year, hip-hop lost A$AP Yams, the Jacka, Chinx, Pumpkinhead, and Sean Price—all pivotal figures in their own right who likely left behind tons of unreleased music. While A$AP Rocky has confirmed he’s picking up where Yams left off and putting out his posthumous album, the more immediate release is Chinx’s debut, Welcome to JFK, out Aug. 14. The team behind the 31-year-old rapper’s first posthumous album has been on an emotional rollercoaster ever since his murder on May 17 in Jamaica, Queens. It has been difficult for Lionel Pickens’ friends, family, and musical collaborators to recover from their loss, but they’ve finally grown comfortable enough to drop the project his fans wanted to hear.
“For the past two months, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing,” says Doug “Biggs” Ellison, Chinx’s manager and executive producer of Welcome to JFK. “I literally went from planning an album, to planning a funeral, and then got right back to finishing up this album. It kind of helped me through the grieving process because I had something to do every day. So between his family, the wife, the kids, and this music, I’ve just been submerged in his presence and doing what he would want me to do to make sure the legacy stays strong and alive.”
Biggs and Chinx were in talks about partnering up as early as 2008 after Chinx served a four-year sentence at Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, N.Y. Seven years ago, Chinx was still trying to get his name out there, recording constantly in Biggs’ studio in Queens and working with the Riot Squad, which consisted of Bynoe, Cau2Gs, and the slain rapper Stack Bundles. Eventually, Chinx met French Montana through Bundles’ friend Max B, and he became a member of the Coke Boys after he clicked with them musically.
Biggs came on as Chinx’s right hand when he was readying the release of his first retail EP, I’ll Take It From Here, in 2013. The five-track project, released through Riot Squad, NuSense Music Group, and Coke Boys, increased his profile as it showed he could make catchy street records, like “Feelings,” for a larger audience. Chinx also removed the “Drugz” portion of his stage name for a cleaner image. After “Feelings” started to get plays on New York radio stations Hot 97 and Power 105.1, Sony Music Entertainment approached Chinx with a record deal in January 2014, but he opted to stay independent.
“With all the groundwork that we had put in, the most important thing for him was obviously ownership,” Biggs says. “I’m sure you know with all the deals everybody is offering these days, they’re 360 deals. You walk away from the table with little or nothing. We didn’t want to get on the label and be shelved.”
After he turned down the Sony deal, Chinx went right back to work on free mixtapes, releasing his two strongest projects to date: Cocaine Riot 4 and Cocaine Riot 5. These tapes showed his penchant for observational hood tales that pegged him as a rising star among Young Thug, A$AP Ferg, and his mentor, French Montana.
He was just so humble and I wanted to show him [the] right direction ’cause I know this game can suck you dry with the wrong people. —French Montana
“I saw the talent before anything, and then, his vibe was so ahead of time,” says French. “He was just so humble and I wanted to show him [the] right direction ’cause I know this game can suck you dry with the wrong people.”
Towards the end of 2014, Biggs was also in talks with eOne Music. He felt strongly about taking Chinx and his talents to the indie powerhouse after he learned that Gabrielle Peluso, former general manager of Def Jam, was brought on by eOne’s SVP of Urban Film and Comedy Allen Blackwell as the VP of Urban Music. Off the strength of “Feelings,” “Couple Niggas,” and “Bodies,” Peluso worked out a deal with Biggs that was finalized in February 2015 for the release of Chinx’s debut, Welcome to JFK.
“Chinx just has that thing where he walks into a room and you know he’s a star,” says Peluso. “He walks into a room [and] says hi to everybody. Shakes their hand. Makes every girl feel like he’s in love with them, makes every guy feel like they could be friends. I did the deal without hearing any new music because it didn’t matter. I knew he knew how to make them.”
eOne commissioned several studio sessions in October through February for the making of JFK with Chinx’s in-house producers who have developed his sound since the start of his Cocaine Riot series. Behind roughly 85 percent of JFK’s production are Four Kings (Young Stokes and Blickie Blaze), Amazin’ Music Group (Lee on the Beats, Bkorn, Austin Powerz, Roc da Producer, Mae N Maejor, Jabarrie, Golden Boy, K-beatz, and Nathan Anthony), and songwriter/singer/rapper MeetSims, who moved from Arkansas to New York so he could work with him one-on-one. Chinx and his team had always been working on JFK in some capacity; probably as early as when he first got the concept tatted on his stomach. But after CR5, they started to set aside records for the project—the album’s intro and the single, “Experimental” and “On Your Body,” respectively.
However, Chinx didn’t have a complete album. Just days after going to the studio to finish up records for JFK, the fatal shooting that ended his life halted his album plans. After his funeral on May 26, everyone involved in Chinx’s career had to come together and re-strategize the release of JFK—and figure out how to do it the way Chinx would’ve wanted.
“Once we got past the funeral, we sat back down and we just readjusted,” Peluso says. “Now that we didn’t have him, people were rushing me. I had outsiders [saying], ‘You have to put the album out now.’ I was like, ‘You guys, I don’t have a finished [album]. It’s not done right this second. It’s almost done, but it’s not fucking done.’ I’m not going to jeopardize the integrity of this project because of pressure.”
With just about every fan and industry insider in hip-hop talking about Chinx’s murder—from Rob and Khloé Kardashian to Meek Mill and Jay Z—it would have been easy to capitalize on the conversation and rush out his debut for high album sales. The biggest hold-up for JFK was securing features before it was time to turn in the album. While songs with Rick Ross, Chris Brown, and Meek Mill never came to fruition, JFK still boasts names such as Ty Dolla $ign, Jeremih, Lil Durk, Nipsey Hussle, and French.