Chinx, born Lionel Pickens was an up-and-coming recording artist, who was killed early Sunday according to the NYPD. Obviously his life was cut short.
He was one of two victims found with gunshot wounds in the same area around 4 a.m. in New York. Pickens was pronounced dead, with multiple gunshot wounds to the torso, once he arrived at Jamaica Medical Center. He was 31.
Pickens, appeared at the one-year anniversary of Club Red Wolf in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Nearly two hours before the fatal shooting, Pickens went on stage at around 2:30 a.m. “He was very good,” Luis Lopez, manager of the club, told the Music Times. “He was here with four or five guys. Then he left. He didn’t fight with anyone.”
The night’s event was promoted to feature Domincan bachata singer Henry Santos, as well as the lesser known hip-hop acts La Mega Supreme, Jumpin J, Manny Mills, Styles and Lil’ Jay. Irvington, N.J.-based rapper T-Bird told a blogger for hip hop DJ Funkmaster Flex’s “In Flex We Trust” website that he’d seen Pickens moments before the show let out Sunday.
“I took this pic with my brother at 3:55 AM and 65 minutes later you were taken away,” T-Bird captioned an Instagram photo of himself and Pickens. “I woke up to tons of missed calls because people were making sure I was ok… they thought I was in the back of the car with Chinx.”
Witnesses and police have said Pickens and another man were sitting in a silver Porsche around 4 a.m. Sunday at Queens Boulevard and 84th Drive in the Briarwood neighborhood of Queens. Another car pulled up alongside the Porsche Panamera before someone in it fired multiple shots at the two men, police said. Pickens died from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest at a Queens hospital, while the another victim, 27-year-old Antar Alziadi, was hit twice in the back of the Porsche and taken to a hospital in critical condition.
To his credit Chinx was on the rise as a recording artist. He was considered in a vote for XXL Magazine’s Freshmen 10th Spot (in the past, the likes of Iggy Azalea, Kendrick Lamar and Macklemore have made XXL’s freshmen classes of the year, meant to highlight hip-hop’s next big things). He had worked
Chinx had been rapping since like many who join in the rap game since childhood in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens where he grew up. He served time before beginning his rap career afterwhich he courted relationships with to the Khloe Kardashian-linked rapper, French Montana. Regardles of the stigma associated with drugs he didn’t shy away from drugs in his work. In fact he went by the moniker Chinx Drugz earlier in his career, and often often teamed up with the Coke Boys, a group and record label founded by New York rapper French Montana. Chinx gained some modicum of notoriety for himself through his association with “Coke Boys” and “Cocaine Riot” mixtape series with Montana and other members of the Coke Boys rap crew.
At the time of his untimely death Chinx was working on a debut solo album called “Welcome to JFK.”
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