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 where he saw that passion grow exponentially. And he got there just in the nick of time. “When I got to Atlanta,” Jack shares. “That was when T.I.’s Trap Muzik came out and the city started booming with the trap movement. I really started my journey, professionally then. I got to see how the big names worked and all that. Getting my craft tight.” 

While in high school, Jack participated in the jazz band, the concert band and the choir, so he could read sheet music -- that skill would give him an edge in his future as a producer. He had also joined the most beloved school club in the South -- the marching band. “Everybody was in the marching band. The drug dealers, the pretty girls...” All of his experiences up until then simply added to his musical resume, for Warren, it has always been about trying something fresh. 

“I’m always experimenting with new sounds, like, I wouldn’t just stick with 808s,” he explains. “I’ma have some pop drums. I’ma have garage drums. I may find something from video games or a cool movie. I just like to keep the sounds coming from different places. I don’t make any record with any intent of how I want it to sound. It just comes out sounding, you know...” he says, pausing. “Different. With a groove. Gotta have that. And a bounce.” 

With his senior year closing in, he looked into new opportunities and it led to an engineering internship at Icon -- global artist Akon’s Atlanta studio in 2008. “It’s like a family there. That’s where I got my first break. Working with producers like DJ Toomp, Drumma Boy and Zaytoven was crazy. I would just sit and watch them work. I came up under Blake Eisman who worked a lot with Usher and Musiq Soulchild. I would learn so much from him and incorporate what I learned into my own stuff.” 

After watching artists at work with big name producers, Papers decided to begin his own career beyond the boards, moving into the booth. The Lilo Brown Chronicles came first, then Backpacks and Jettpacks in 2013 [“That’s when people really felt like, yeah, I can rap.”]. Later, Papers joined forces with longtime friend DJ Domo. The two would form Berkley Park -- naming the group after the neighborhood that Icon Studios is burrowed in. They dropped their Route 11
6 project soon after. Of his style, Papers says: “I didn’t wanna talk about the same thing everybody else was talking about, the same situations. I don’t trap, sell dope or do pills. But I’ve been through a lot of other experiences,” he states, matter-of-factly, then, “I like movies and games. I like to talk about the bullshit that I went through just to make it a little more ‘out there’.”

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