Lippegaus studied German literature, musicology and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Cologne after making his debut with a jazz broadcast on Miles Davis on Südwestfunk at the age of seventeen.

Besides jazz Lippegaus also wrote about chanson, rock, folk music as well as on musical border areas, always with a particular interest into links between music and literature (Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas), film (Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Vincente Minnelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Luc Godard) and photography (Roy DeCarava, Guy Le Querrec, Hyou Vielz [de], William Claxton).

His series Musiker als DJ (English: "Musicians as DJ") featured guests such as Terry Riley, Annette Peacock, Robert Wyatt, Hans Reichel, Savina Yannatou, Evan Parker, Michael Riessler [de], Amélia Muge, Pascal Comelade, Gavin Bryars, Franz Koglmann, Rabih Abou-Khalil, and others.

[1] He also works as translator, for example for the biography Michel Petrucciani – Leben gegen die Zeit (English: "Life against Time")[2] and for Amazing Grace, a film by Sydney Pollack on Aretha Franklin (2019).

For the WDR, he worked with director Hein Bruehl on the features Cry Baby Cry (1997), Bis die kalte Zeit uns frißt on Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill (1998), Clowns, Clochards & Casanovas on Nino Rota (1999), Wolfsmond after a book by Julio Llamazares (2002) as well as on In meiner Einsamkeit des Südens - Der europäische Blick auf den Orient on the travel writer Isabelle Eberhardt and the Spanish author Juan Goytisolo (1997).