Happy 30th Anniversary to Chino XL’s XX debut album Here To Save You All, originally released April 9, 1996.
So, it’s 1996, and I’m in the passenger seat of my homie’s car, traversing the streets and highways of Los Angeles. I’ve popped my dubbed cassette of Chino XL’s Here To Save You All in his tape deck, and I’m playing “Riiiot!”, his team-up with Ras Kass. I’m constantly rewinding the tape to get everyone in the car to fully appreciate the lyrics, which I’m pretty sure they’re not. And I’m annoying everyone. Thinking about it, three decades later, I can recognize that I was being insufferable.
But I don’t care at the time. Because, damn it, these guys need to fucking appreciate what Chino is saying here. I get them to pay attention right as Chino kicks the song’s most notorious line (“By this industry, I’m trying not to get fucked, like 2Pac in jail”) and one of my friends loses it. And not in a good way. “Who’s this rookie trying to dis Pac?!?!?!” No, dammit, I try to explain, Chino’s not a rookie. He was in a group called Art of Origin during the early 1990s. This is just his solo album. But no one’s trying to hear any of that.
Not long after, the same friend exasperatedly insisted that I stop rewinding the tape. I think I did so. But I still made sure the rest of the song played. I put in a new cassette soon after, disgustedly resigned to the fact that these guys just weren’t ever going to get it.
There are few emcees I enjoyed as much as I did during the mid-1990s era than Derek “Chino XL” Barbosa (R.I.P.). Though I was aware of him during high school (more on that later), I really got deep into his music my Junior year of college. In a hip-hop landscape where commercialism was increasingly valued, he came across as a potent antidote. The New Jersey-born emcee was completely uninterested in appealing to the lowest common denominator and seemingly had contempt for any artist who compromised their music in attempts to seek out pop appeal. Chino XL was one of the defining and most important artists of my musical fandom during my college years. And his debut, Here To Save You All, is still an all-time favorite 30 years after it was released on Rick Rubin’s American Records.
Chino XL did indeed get his start in Art of Origin, who were also signed to American (back when they were Def American). I was fascinated by the group after catching the video to one of their singles, “Into the Pit.” The crew was a duo made up of Chino and Keri “Kaos” Chandler, the latter of which would go on to become an incredibly successful Deep House DJ and producer. They dropped a pair of singles, then broke up.
I didn’t actually get the Art of Origin singles until a few years later, picking up the 12-inches from the used bins at Funk-O-Mart, a famed record store in Philadelphia, where I was attending college. Around the same time, I discovered, via hip-hop/rap message boards, that Chino was preparing to drop some solo material.
When I got into tape trading proper, two of my earliest acquisitions were the demo version of Ras Kass’ Soul On Ice (1996) and an “alternate” version of Chino XL’s Here To Save You All. The album itself was similar to what eventually was sold in stores, though sequenced differently. It was missing a couple of songs that made the commercial version but included “Purple Hands In The Air” and “Dark Night Of The Bloodspillers” from his first solo 12-inch.
I played the third or fourth generation dubbed cassette A LOT. I also dubbed a lot of copies of it myself and sent them to friends back in California. I suspect that they didn’t care nearly as much as I did.
What initially drew me to Chino’s material were his poisonous punchlines. He exuded an “I Don’t Give a Fuck” attitude, ruthlessly mocking respected rappers and artists with brutal truths. Yes, a lot of the persona was built on shock value, but he was incisive and clever and goddamn funny. It made for outright hilarious music. At the time, this approach appealed to my cynical 20-year-old sensibilities. Chino provides these potent “punch rhymes” in abundance throughout Here To Save You All.
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Some have asserted Eminem took his style from Chino, especially during the early parts of their careers. There are certainly similarities, but I’d say it goes a little deeper than both having no issues skewering beloved icons. Truthfully, both emcees built their aura of ruthlessness atop raw nerves and trauma. And it’s the history of trauma that informs much more of Here To Save You All than many ever acknowledge, much like Eminem’s own issues help define his initial releases. In an interview with DubCNN, Chino acknowledged the similarities between the two of them, saying, “Let’s just say that Eminem and I have traveled along the same rhythm a lot.”
The main architect of Here To Save You All’s production is B-Wiz (R.I.P.), who crafted roughly two-thirds of the album’s tracks. It also features beats from Dan Charnas, American’s hip-hop A&R, as well as DJ Homicide, Erik Romero, and Kut Masta Kurt, who all had ties to the label. Bird of the Western Heimisfear crew also contributes the backdrops to two of my favorite entries on the project.
Chino sets the album’s tone right out of the gate with “I Deliver.” The version that appears on the finished album is different than what’s on leaked demos and white label singles, due to sample clearance issues. Instead, Chino runs roughshod over chops of orchestral strings, taking shots at many a popular entertainer. The punchlines fly fast and hit hard: “Won't throw my life away on coke like Darryl Strawberry” & “Leave you scraped and ashier than Larry Holmes” & “Rough like Craig Mack’s derm abrasion.”
Chino’s massive technical skill, lyrical technique, and concept mastery went largely unrecognized throughout his career, even though it was staring his audience in its collective face on Here To Save You All. With “No Complex,” the album’s first single, I might have focused on the shots thrown at Arsenio Hall, Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, and Monie Love, but his stylistic displays are exceptional, and his underlying message excoriating rappers who are caught up in image rather than substance resonated at the time.
Chino supplies multiple lyric brawls throughout Here To Save You All. “Partner To Swing” and “Freestyle Rhymes” are both entertaining romps. Chino dispenses a dig at his former Art of Origin cohort Kaos (“Can't be productive when your partner is just a lazy bitch”). “Feelin’ Evil Again,” which could have been the name of the album, is probably the most “upbeat” song on the album, as Chino sprints through a pair of verses. “The bomb's lit, you try to pick my style like chop sticks,” he raps. “Ill concepts, no nonsense, screaming like Black Sabbath concerts!”
“Many Different Ways” is another song that has a special place in my heart, as it led off that bootleg tape I traded for. Chino is absolutely locked in, delivering three lengthy verses, landing too many verbal knock-out blows to count. He professes to “swinging my fist hard, causing viral spinal meningitis / When the slightest vinyl coincides you risk dying to my violent twist.” DJ Mark Luv does an excellent job providing scratches as well, particularly while cutting up MC Lyte’s vocals to close the track.
Chino teams with other like-minded and similarly skilled emcees throughout Here To Save You All to disperse venomous braggadocio. “Waiting To Exhale” is his showcase for the New Jersey-based Gravitation crew, which included Chino within its ranks. The emcees in the collective continuously pass the mic without pause, each demonstrating their distinctive techniques.
I outlined my obsession with “Riiiot!” earlier, as hearing two great and dynamic emcees deliver flawless lyrical performances was unadulterated hip-hop Nirvana for me. Chino and Ras Kass’ verbal mastery went beyond the one-liners. The 2Pac line is what got Chino dissed on the Makaveli album, but the pair also weave raps that include references to electro-magnets and allusions to complicated gymnastic routines.
And they go for the throat, as Chino raps, “Iconoclismic, twisted without the use of fiber optics / Knocked his eyeballs out the sockets, I got your Adam’s Apples in my pockets.” Later, Ras dispenses with some of my favorite lines ever, declaring, “I gives a fuck who's certified platinum or gold / ’Cause I got rhymes for every unit you sold / Your plaques corrode when I collage colloquials / At first the buzz was local but now the nose grows like Pinocchio.”
“Shabba Doo Conspiracy” is another dope team-up, this time with the always eccentric Kool Keith, who was in the midst of building his own musical reinvention. B-Wiz crafts a beat that borrows from two different Ramsey Lewis songs, adding in a gurgling bassline. To their credit, both emcees revel in their weirdness, spinning bizarre imagery and frequently changing rhyme patterns.
Chino XL records exceptional conceptual material as well. He explains his drive to hustle for survival on the DJ Homicide-produced “Thousands,” acknowledging that while he’s “the king of punchlines, I do what I gotta for my bank roll.” “Kreep” is inspired by the Radiohead song of same name, as he bitterly laments a recent break-up, still trying to deal with increasingly toxic heartbreak. The song became Chino’s most successful song, reaching #1 on the Billboard Bubbling Under R&B singles chart, and even earned appreciation from Thom Yorke himself.
Some of the best tracks on Here To Save You All feature Chino dealing with his own internal turmoil. “What Am I?” centers on his conflicted feelings as a mixed-race child, growing up in both suburban and urban environs throughout Jersey. He details how he never quite fit in, often rejected by the Black, white, or Puerto Rican communities. He describes eventually channeling all of this pain toward his motivation to become an emcee, rapping, “See what I lacks in melanin I makes up with adrenaline / Your weak attempts at blemishing my mixed heritage I'm treasuring.”
Chino seems to mix reality with fiction on “It’s All Bad,” which begins as the origin story of his life as a rapper. He details the initial rough goings signing with Warner Bros. and the many bumps he encountered trying to balance growing up with advancing his career as an artist. However, during the song’s third verse, he envisions a world where he’s broken through and achieved the success that he’s long desired, but at the expense of his soul. “What I worked so hard for, ultimately, is defeating me,” he laments.
Chino ends the album with a pair of fantastical narratives. The gothic “Ghetto Vampire” begins with Chino splicing Satan’s creation myth from Paradise Lost with traditional vampire lore, as Chino details his bloody exploits across three verses. The track also serves as another not so veiled metaphor for the origins of his own musical career, as he’s transformed into a “bloodsucker” after being shunned by the music industry. “That's just how I fucking express myself,” he explains. “When I consume your blood and leave you dead, sorry, it’s just to keep my health.”
Chino ends the album with “Rise,” a track produced by Dan Charnas. He envisions himself as a Crow-like figure, seeking revenge against those who murdered him in the streets “without my goal accomplished.” Over a sample of Hugh Masekela’s “Been Such a Long Time Gone,” he struggles with both his death and his transition back to the world of the living, soul still in anguish, but knowing “without revenge, I think I’ll never rest in peace.”
Chino XL never got the widespread success and acclaim that he deserved for Here To Save You All. It’s mostly remembered for the harsh disses of icons of the urban community, while its emotional depth goes ignored. And hey, I did and still do enjoy those harsh disses, but I wish he was remembered by a wider audience for more than that. He was a one-of-a-kind emcee whose life was cut far too short in 2024, at the age of 50. His music will always be central to my development and musical identity, even while I acknowledge that a lot of people out there still aren’t going to get it.
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