King Chip w/ Narada Sauti
Blue Moose Tap house — Saturday, Jan. 31 at 6:30 p.m.
It was inevitable that King Chip’s rap success, which includes high-profile collaborations with Freddie Gibbs and Big Sean, would eventually lead him out of Ohio to pursue bigger and better things. But as the names of his latest releases make transparently clear, CleveLAfornia and 44108 (Cleveland’s zipcode), his roots in East Cleveland, where he first came up as the battle rapper known as Chip the Ripper, are a defining feature of his music.
King Chip’s loyalty to Cleveland and its rap scene is endearing, but it has perhaps been double-edged in terms of his success. Though his greatest exposure has probably come from his collaborations with fellow-Clevelander Kid Cudi, Chip’s contributions have been overshadowed by Cudi’s fame, often coming across as something something of a sidekick.
However, the fault isn’t so much with King Chip here as it is with the packaging and politics of musical success, and the Chip-Cudi collaborations have lead to some great rap songs (“Just What I Am” to name just one), as well as some interesting, even bizarre opportunities to reach the broader public. For instance, the track “Afterwards (Bring Yo Friends)” features Kid Cudi and King Chip alongside Michael Bolton. Yes, that Michael Bolton.
King Chip’s unique lyrical style has also found him audiences in unexpected places. He achieved a degree of internet notoriety when his song “SLAB Freestyle” became something of an internet meme: The lyrics “Interior Crocodile Alligator / I Drive a Chevrolet Movie Theater” were posted on music blogs as humorous image macros, and videos featuring the looped lyrics became popular on YouTube and Vine. The lyrics aren’t a one-off joke, but rather a standard feature of King Chip’s rap style, one where serious verse doesn’t flinch at all against the use of absurd punchlines.
What most sets King Chip’s music apart is how infused it is with the spirit of Cleveland, both in its texture and lyrical content. Often his most striking songs are dark and claustrophobic in a way that seems to evoke the city itself. For those that are somehow unaware, Cleveland hasn’t exactly been experiencing an economic renaissance, and like many Rust Belt cities, opportunities for the future are perpetually bleak.
King Chip doesn’t really dwell on any of this, and his 44108 mixtape is hardly a mournful ode to the fall of a once-great city. But the realities of growing up in this environment are always there beneath the surface. It’s not that he’s making anything as simple as straight gangsta rap either. He celebrates his hometown and how it created the person he is today, but he doesn’t glorify a life of crime or wallow in former hardship.
Predictably, the influence of legendary Cleveland rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony looms large over King Chip’s music. That’s not to say his music sounds in any way like a throw-back to ‘90s rap, but it does feature the kind of laid-back toughness of Midwestern style pioneered by Bone Thugs. His music also finds inspiration from across the modern hip-hop landscape. What makes King Chip so compelling is that he is able to meld all of this together in a way that speaks authentically to his own origins while still creating a sound that is all his own.
This article originally appeared in Little Village issue 169.
