The Charles Worth LP is Cleveland rapper Chip Tha Ripper’s fifth official studio album. Across the record’s 21 songs, he pays tribute to the city that made him, challenged him, and continues to be his primary source of inspiration.
Cleveland rap artist Chip Tha Ripper has shared his latest album, The Charles Worth LP, where he pays homage to his background and his family upbringing in the Ohio city.
Chip Tha Ripper has had an extraordinary journey over the last 20 years. Having been called one of the most exciting artists on the local Cleveland scene in the mid-00s, Chip began relentlessly making mixtapes to see if he could slowly build a name for himself.
His career got an unusual leg-up in 2007 after his freestyle on PrettyBoy Floy’s Street Starz TV Radio show went viral (most will remember this meme-worthy moment as the ‘Interior Crocodile Alligator’ rap).
But viral fame is only part of Chip’s overall career and artistry. He is a highly productive musician known for writing hundreds of songs and having a hand in producing and engineering. Beyond that, he has also collaborated with numerous other major artists, including Wiz Khalifa, Freddie Gibbs, Big Sean, and Kid Cudi (he has recorded several tracks with Cudi, including the much-famed ‘Just What I am’; Chip has been on every single Kid Cudi tour he is ever had.
The Charles Worth LP showcases Chip at his best, brightest, and most inventive. Speaking about his artistry in the past, Chip has said that he’s not interested in rapping about the “life of a rapper” but wants to use his lyrics to speak about his people and for his people.
And he does this. Over clean, soulful production – which sometimes switches to gospel, sometimes to synth, sometimes to trap beats – Chip raps about his locale and the people who made him. His lyricism is fresh and lively; on ‘Sauce Me Up,’ he jokingly says: “Ask Chat-GPT about me, I’m straight out the street.” But Chip’s far too seasoned in the music world to shout out to the streets simply because he thinks it’ll give him some superficial social cred. He does it because that’s where he grew up and wants to pay tribute to.
On the later track ‘Original Man,’ Chip pays tribute to his upbringing in Cleveland. The song is deeply metaphorical (another rapping skill that Chip has up his sleeve), with the artist comparing himself to the earth (“I gave birth to all these plants”) to make the point that everything he does is “all natural.” He makes a clear case that he’s as real as they come.
The album’s first song, ‘CleveLand Hustlers’ (featuring fellow Cleveland artist Layzie Bones), sounds like an anthem for the city itself; it tells the stories of real people making their way in a turbulent environment that they can’t help but love.
The city of Cleveland could hardly have asked for a better rap poet to represent it.
