AyoKipp
AyoKipp
By the start of the millennium, AyoKipp, born Kippy Kenneth Warren, was just a kid growing up in Toledo. The city, nestled in one far corner of Ohio, adjacent to Lake Erie’s waterfront, is close enough to Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati and Cleveland to have cultivated a passion for music that would form Jack’s entire future -- from engineer to producer to artist. Beyond his city’s influence, his grandmother raised him in the church and encouraged the fundamentals -- Jack Papers learned how to play the flute by the third grade. Even before then, at six years old, Papers’ grandfather would have him tag along on his runs around the city. “He would have me all in the bars,” he says with a chuckle. The music he’d heard on these excursions stuck with him throughout the years. “There were the jazz and swing elements. There was a lot of OG music because the [clientele included] hustlers, pool sharks, prostitutes and gangsters.” By the time he hit adolescence, Warren’s next home would be one whe