Biggs was one of the first people the police called when Chinx was shot in the early morning of May 17in Queens, New York.
“It was like super-numbing because it’s a phone call that you can never anticipate,” Biggs, who was Chinx’s manager, says during an exclusive interview with HipHopDX. “Nobody should have to go through [that].”
Biggs rushed to the hospital with Chinx’s mother and was then told that the Queens, New York rapper had passed away.
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“Somebody decided to come in and take his life,” Biggs says. “That’s something that the people closest to him will never be able to understand just knowing the type of person that he was. He just did not deserve that.”
Chinx collaborators Meet Simms, Blickie Blaze and Young Stokes were together recording when they heard their friend was shot. They tried to get to the hospital, but got news of his passing before they could get there. They felt “hopeless.”
“The only thing that was left for us to do,” Biggs says, “was to get back to work.”
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After burying their friend, Chinx’s “dream team,” according to the manager, drew up their strength to finish the rapper’s debut studio album, Welcome to JFK, which was released August 14.
“We definitely bonded together and made it our mission to execute on a much higher level as it related and pertained to him putting out this project,” Biggs says. “It became priority number one and the goal for everybody was to see and make sure that he won and succeeded.”
The album debuted at #21 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart, selling 14,600 copies in its first week.
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Meet Simms appears as a featured artist on three of the tracks. Young Stokes and Blickie Blaze recorded and engineered the album.
Stokes worked with Chinx throughout the album process and, for him, the finished product is a scrapbook of their friendship.
“I love the entire album because every record that we recorded meant something and all the memories that I share with Chinx in the studio mean something,” he says. “So every time I think back to a record, I think back to a time that we shared. Every time I listen to the songs, I listen to the rhymes, the beats and everything. Everything reminds me of moments we shared and the times, the friendship that we had.”
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Chinx’s Welcome to JFK “Became Therapy” For His Crew
For Biggs, working with the team and hearing Chinx’s voice brought healing.
“That literally became therapy for a lot of weeks,” he says. “Had it not been for me being around other people that I know knew him well and us kinda getting on the mission to execute and do what he wanted to happen and make sure that his dream was lived out, I don’t know how I woulda gotten through this process any other way to be perfectly honest with you. It seems like when you listen to the album and you listen to the music, the things that we had to go through to get the mixes and the masters and finish everything up, it was like he was there talking to us because the records are so prophetic and so relatable to discussions that we’ve all had with him. All things that are relatable to us based on where he is, where he was in his career and what he expected to happen.”
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The team points out the songs “Go Get It” and “How To Get Rich” as tracks that show the rapper’s journey and ambition.
Nonetheless, in the wake of his death, Chinx was criticized for his association with drug culture. He formerly went by the stage name Chinx Drugz and is a member of French Montana‘s Coke Boys.
“That’s just ignorance,” Biggs says, explaining that Chinx is an acronym for “Coward-Hearted Individuals Never Exist” and Coke Boys represents “Creation Of Kings Everywhere.”
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He says that Chinx was not a drug dealer, but was a product of street culture.
“Anybody that knows this kid and knows his relationships with people and knows how he conducted business and carried himself knows that while he may have rapped about certain things in records and songs because of his experiences growing up,” Biggs says, “he was so far from that at this point in time, it’s ridiculous. It’s totally ridiculous.”
Chinx Lives On Through Music
Biggs, Young Stokes, Blickie Blaze and Meet Simms are now trying to ensure that Chinx’s Rap legacy lives on and that his family is provided for. In lieu of flowers for his funeral, the team asked for donations via GoFundMe to help support Chinx’s wife and three children. Biggs says that one of Chinx’s main motivators for becoming a successful rapper was to provide for his family.
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“He’s such a team player,” Biggs says. “It’s crazy. I’ve never met a person with a stronger sense of loyalty and knowledge of self, understanding who he is and what he brought to the table and what was necessary to take his craft to the next level. Outside of the creativity, he just brought a passion to the table to win. Again, he didn’t come from the best of circumstances and he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he learned how to take the lemons that life gave him and make lemonade. He really became a master at that. There’s so many politics in the game and in this business and industry, oftentimes you have to smile when you don’t want to smile. He had learned how to shake the hand and kiss the babies and he was definitely setting himself up to win and make sure that his team won.”
Blickie Blaze says that he saw the competitive side in Chinx that went beyond paying the bills.
“[Rapping] was still a sport to him,” he says. “It was like high school, pre-high school, college and now he’s getting ready to graduate with a master’s in rapping. That was his whole premise. And his album would be his master’s. He still took it as an art and a sport.”
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Even though Chinx has passed away, Biggs says that his legacy lives on through his album.
“It’s all of his hard work and everything it took for him to get to this place wrapped up in 12 records,” Biggs says.
Young Stokes echoes Biggs’ sentiments.
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“He’s not dead with none of the people that knows him,” Young Stokes says. “Personally, he’s always gonna be alive. To all his fans, you have his whole life story in the album. This album, he worked hard and dedicated his time and his energy and his money into this album. That’s a piece of him. Never forget. That’s his legacy.”
