Chip Tha Ripper returns to Cleveland for Kid Cudi’s Moon Man’s Landing Festival

The West Bank of the Flats will be filled with live music this weekend with big-name acts, from hip-hop to folk and electronica.

The first-ever Moon Man’s Landing Festival, put on by Grammy Award-winning rapper Kid Cudi, will take place Saturday, Sept. 17.

Haim, Playboi Carti, Pusha T and others will hit the stage with performances kicking off in the afternoon.

Kid Cudi will perform at the event, alongside fellow Clevelander Chip Tha Ripper, also known as King Chip.

Chip was born Charles Worth in Cleveland’s East Side, and he has been longtime friends with Scott Mescudi, better known as Kid Cudi.

“We’re actually on tour right now,” Worth said. “You know, he's a friend before anything.”

Both rappers grew up in the Cleveland area and have been performing shows together this summer around the country.

Kid Cudi brought Chip Tha Ripper out as a surprise, unannounced guest during his To The Moon tour.

The Moon Man’s Landing Festival will conclude the United States lag of the tour before it continues overseas, starting with a stop in Tokyo in October.

Being a Clevelander 

Several rap artists who have gone on to garner critical acclaim and large, loyal fanbases call Cleveland home, including Machine Gun Kelly and Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony.

“I think that it's just something about the culture of Cleveland, and it's just so creative, you know, clever. So, I think it definitely transcends into the music as well,” Worth said.

Kid Cudi and Chip Tha Ripper will conclude the U.S. leg of touring together with the Moon Man's Landing Festival. The two Cleveland-born rappers are frequent collaborators and friends.  [AEG Presents]

He said Mescudi’s mother taught him music at Roxboro Middle School in Cleveland Heights.

Later in life, he got to know her son through a mutual friend, and they started rapping around the same time.

“I swung over to his set, and we met, and that was it,” Worth said. “And next time I [see] him, he came in my house and we were hanging out and that was it. You know, I never looked back. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Chip Tha Ripper has released three full-length albums since first starting his music career in 2006.

Between releases, he’s put out several mixtapes and has collaborated with Kid Cudi on more than a dozen songs, including “ Just What I Am” and “ Hyyerr”.

“A lot of people love the music that we have together,” Worth said. “It's a great tour.”

The Moon Man’s Landing Festival includes a curated lineup from Kid Cudi, including artists he’s collaborated with and others.

The event will feature two stages of live performances, as well as installations, an interactive app and a VIP area.

Worth, who lives in Los Angeles, said the Flats is the perfect place for a music festival of this magnitude since it’s going through a transition period and is the “nucleus” of all sides of the city.

“I love that area right now. It's just kind of spiked. Just the vibe in the scene,” he said. “I remember, like, coming down to the Flats years ago, like Old River Road and like seeing it now… it just really makes my heart smile. It makes me want to kind of move back to Cleveland, honestly.”

Worth has put his love for Cleveland into a new original song called “Let’s Go Cleveland,” which he said is a “war cry” for the Browns.

The fan anthem will drop Sept. 18 for the Browns’ home opener game, which Worth said he will attend.

“I want that to be something that gets played in all the Cleveland bars across the country,” he said. “When I'm in L.A., I have my Cleveland bar.”

He said he’s looking forward to hearing his Browns fan anthem playing for fans in Cleveland and outside the city.

“Where you live doesn't really change who you are or where you're from or what you represent. You know, I'm always going to be Cleveland,” he said.

The evolution of Chip Tha Ripper to King Chip

Worth released a new, full-length album called “ Bonfire” this year with producer Lex Luger.

The album’s title refers to celebration and fellowship, as well as getting rid of waste or what is no longer useful.

“You can use the fire to kind of cleanse the old way,” he said.

Fans will notice that the new album was released under the name Chip Tha Ripper, which Worth brought back after several years of releasing music as King Chip.

Worth got the name Chip Tha Ripper during rap battle competitions at a venue on West 17th Street and Detroit Avenue.

“I would do a really good job, to say the least. And I didn't have a rap name. [They’d say], ‘If you keep coming in here, you know, destroying like this, we're going to have to start calling you like Jack the Ripper or something.”

Chip came from a nickname for Charles, and his new rap moniker was born.

He said when LeBron James left Cleveland for Miami in 2010, fans would say, “It’s sad that we lost King James, but we still got King Chip.”

“At the same time, I was making a lot of discoveries about myself and my family,” Worth said. “I was able to get with like a genealogist, is what they're called, and I made a discovery that my family [was] here to pre-colonial to America on both sides of my family.”

This led Worth to an era of self-discovery, and he wanted to share that with others.

“It just gave me so much power and positive positivity, because it kind of filled the void for me in terms of who I was,” he said. “And I wanted everybody to feel this, and I wanted to set the example. So, I referred to people as ‘king’ and ‘queen.’”

He said on a practical level, releasing music under both names makes sense for fans searching for his music.

On “Bonfire,” his track, “Blue Hunnets” is by Chip Tha Ripper but features King Chip.

Putting both names on the album was a deliberate choice, Worth said.

“Chip the Ripper, he's invincible, you know, he's immortal,” he said.

Working on new projects

Worth said he has hundreds of unreleased songs, but he wants to deliver them to fans in a way that shows his growth and evolution as an artist.

“I came up with a formula where I'm going to release like maybe like four singles that lead up to the album,” he said.

The next album he plans to release is called “Charles Worth.”

He’s also been working on a project called “ The King Chip Experience,” which features videos that show the world through Worth’s eyes.

“I was able to find a really cool pair of sunglasses that record for an hour, audio [and] video. And when I wear these glasses, they capture a first-person view ,” he said.

He said fans don’t often get to see the artist’s perspective when they’re performing on stage.

“It's really cool because it gets in places that cameras can't really get. So, it's all natural and it's all real interactions in real, you know, just real situations, real. Just my real life,” he said.

Worth said the Moon Man’s Landing Festival will be the first time he’s performed in his hometown since COVID-19 first impacted the music industry in 2020.

“Cleveland, get ready,” he said. “Every time I'm in Cleveland, I'm at home and I just can't wait to come back and party with the fans. ”

General admission and VIP tickets are available for the Moon Man’s Landing Festival. Chip Tha Ripper will kick off the performances at 3:20 p.m.

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