On May 17, 2015, Lionel Pickens, known as the Coke Boys rapper Chinx (or Chinx Drugz), was killed in a drive-by shooting while sitting behind the wheel of his Porsche in Queens. Chinx was a street savvy rapper with solid pop instincts and singsong sensibilities (not unlike his label boss French Montana) who was cut down just as he’d begun to blossom. His posthumous debut album, Welcome to JFK, was a reflection of his promise, and served as both a finely-curated introduction and a proper send-off. JFK was a swan song capped by the closer “Die Young” with the powerful and prescient final bar “I pray I be okay when I grow up a little bigger/If I don’t, tell my babies daddy was a real nigga.” As endnotes go, it doesn’t get more fitting than that. So releasing another record postmortem, with a myth-building title like Legends Never Die, feels suspiciously like a branding play, less concerned with eulogizing Chinx’s art and instead setting its sights on his legacy. In its rush to glory, Legends Never Die becomes the one thing a legacy album can’t be: forgettable.
When remembering Chinx’s brief career, listeners should refer to his Cocaine Riot mixtape series, which fully captured his bellowed melodies and joyous dope dealer romps without the stakes. In an attempting to build an obelisk out of scraps, the stakes are simply too high on Legends Never Die and these hard-drive cloggers couldn’t hope to live up to them. The songs are all clearly outtakes from the same cobbled together sessions and recordings that birthed Welcome to JFK—it has the same cast of producers (Blickie Blaze, Young Stokes, Lee on the Beats, Austin Powerz, and Remo the Hitmaker) and many of the same guests (Montana, Meet Sims, and another verse from the late Stack Bundles), only worse execution. The feature verses are bland and the album is poorly sequenced. The middle section is scattered and uneven, sandwiching a grating poacher tune like “Slide Up in Ya Bitch” in between a ballad (“Yeah I Do”) and a ride or die anthem (“Real Bitch”). The album should end with the Montana-assisted “Legendary,” but doesn’t. None of these tracks are among Chinx’s best or even his most fun work, and attempting to use them to cement his legend, ironically, seems shortsighted.
Despite missing its mark, Legends Never Die isn’t without purpose—it's still refreshing to hear new Chinx verses and hooks, which are surprisingly earwormy. In a way, the album unfolds as the Book of Chinx, recounting how he lived and died: getting rich selling coke, living a luxurious lifestyle, and trading shots with bitter enemies and jealous rivals. A song like “Around Me,” which applies “fuck nigga” repellant, reads like his mantra and there’s some haunting foreshadowing in lyrics like “Shit a nigga seen, couldn’t live through it/Nigga used to stop at the red light/Now a nigga dip through it.” (There’s even a bar about coming through the block in a Porsche.) But inside these songs he’s present; he wins, he reflects, he prays, he jokes, he loves, he loots, and he lives. For 50 minutes, Chinx breathes again.
When Legends Never Die is working well, it embodies Chinx’s spirit, showing off his versatility in the process. The strobing “For the Love” finds him in full croon, delivering one of his strongest vocal performances of his career with Meet Sims at his back. On “Crown Royal,” he wades into a wave of heavy 808 bass with choppy cadences crowning himself a coke kingpin (“Got the accolades on the corner/Dope from Peru, sniff from Tijuana”). “Like This,” which features smooth Chrisette Michele background vocals, is radio ready with plush synth arrangements and a hook that rattles around the brain. He does his cleanest writing on “Match That,” challenging competitors to match his accomplishments and drawing parallels in the same breath.
In fits and starts, you can hear the gears turning; Chinx was finding his rhythm and might’ve developed into an astute craftsman given time. Now, all that remains are the drafts he left behind. Legends Never Die won’t preserve his legacy, but it’s another reminder of what could’ve been.
