Chino XL On the Wake Up Show Worldwide, Y'all

Every so often, I get e-mails asking me if this EP really exists (it's listed on my Chino XL discography page); so I figured this'd make a good update. Yes, it's real; and it's also pretty good.

This came out around the time of the first 2 volumes of the Wake Up Show Free Styles double LP sets (which were really must-have classics of their time); which hardcore punch-line heavy friend of the show Chino XL was a perfect canditdate for. It starts out with an exclusive "Wake Up Show Anthem"... Free Styles LPs had a bunch of these... exclusive songs with various MCs name-dropping The Wake Up Show in their freestyles. In fact, it's worth pointing out that all the content on this EP is exclusive (or at least it was at the time... Wake Up Show put out a lot of LPs over the years, and I haven't checked every single one of them); none of this is featured on other Wake Up Show or Chino XL releases.

Then there's a very brief clip from an on-air interview with Chino, Sway and Tech introducing King Tech's "No Complex" remix. In case you missed it, King Tech is a really underrated producer, and for this version he's turned in a slow, rolling deep (almost Miami deep) basslined track that still manages to leave the emphasis on the vocals. Afterwards, we come back to the same interview about the remix, which leads into a freestyle consisting mainly of material from his first album. Finally, there's two more remixes of "No Complex," four Wake Up Show promos by Special Ed, Born Allah (another "friend" of the WUS who regularly turns up on their projects), the short-lived R&B group Stepchild, and Jurassic 5 (and they're pretty good; especially the J5 one; but I don't know how much replay value you'll find in some radio show commercials), and six break beats by Prince Ice, who DJ'd at the time on the WUS.

All three remixes are tight, and "No Complex" - Chino's first major label single and still one of his best - is an excellent choice to receive the deluxe treatment here. Even if you're not the most forgiving Chino fan, and steered clear of the Poison Pen album (he probably would've been better off releasing the actual, lost PP album than recording a new one and just recycling the title), you might want to give this one a listen.