Chip Tha Ripper – Tell Ya Friends

One thing with Chip, you’ve got the feeling he doesn’t want to be put in a box. For the most part ‘Tell Ya Friends’ takes us on a colorful soundscape trip with a cohort of interesting featurings.

Being from Cleveland, why wouldn’t he pay homage to Bone Thugs & Harmony with his rapid 9mm flow on the stubborn and rusty ‘We Ain’t Playin’ featuring CyHi the Prince? We’re almost back to East 1999 here. Even the Lex Luger produced ‘Out here’ has that Cleveland gloom to it. No wonder Chip and Krayzie Bone team up for one track, the strong ‘Stay Sleep’.

On the other end of the spectrum Chip has also been a collaborator of Kid Cudi (they have a common project supposedly coming).  You can hear some influence on the electro deserted ‘Cactus’, the gentle neo-soul ‘Hold me Down’ with Eric Grant and the minimalist gem ‘Gloryout’ produced by Hi-Tek. Too bad ‘Ride 4 You’ with both of them comes out a little bit uncreative.

There are an awful lot of songs about women and money on this mixtape; I’ll keep ‘Light Skinned Hoes’ for the Three-Six Mafia-esque hook. I would have liked to save ‘Pocket Full’, I do like the production and the tempo here, but I guess there’s a limit to my acceptance of bad lyrics.

Fortunately the mixtape still holds a few surprises with the melancholic ‘25 Wives’ featuring Wale, the explosive and unexpected ‘Boomshakalaka’ with Bun B hard as ever, and the anxiogenic dance track ‘Here we Are’.

I like when a rapper has more than one string to his bow. Being eclectic is rather a rare trait in today’s hip hop. What Chip Tha Ripper did here is to hold my interest strongly enough to make me want to know what his next project’s gonna be. Just cut off some of the head and the tail of ‘Tell Ya Friends’ and you’ll have a nice collection of songs.