Munir might not be a name that is well known in the U.S., but he’s been making noise in the international scene over the last five years, both under this name and the act Midnight Runners. The Indonesian producer has been doing really exciting things in the worlds of New Age, disco, funk, and house in this time. Just this past January, he released his debut full-length album, Eastern Sun, on the Chicago label Star Creatures.

Portland, Oregon label Fresh Selects has brought us a lot of interesting music since their launch in 2013, with releases from everyone like Umii to Charlotte Dos Santos to Low Leaf to Sir to Iman Omari to Mndsgn., just to name a few. While a lot of their releases have been from artists from Portland or the West Coast in general, they occasionally do look beyond this geographic region. For their most recent release, they’ve looked all the way across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand to give us the debut album from LAPIS, Third Person You.

Televangel is a producer from Oakland who used to work as part of the production duo Blue Sky Black Death, but has been forging a solo career for about the last four or five years. His last full-length album came in 2018, when he dropped Anthropocene Blues on Fake Four. Now he’s back with a new album as part of Ian Urbina’s Outlaw Ocean project, The Cosmic Waters. In 2019, reporter Ian Urbina released a book that was the culmination of years of research called The Outlaw Ocean, which chronicles all the ways in which we as a planet don’t govern the oceans, which constitute about two-thirds of the planet.

Small Professor is a producer from Philly who has been releasing music for over a decade. He’s collaborated with everyone from Curly Castro to Guilty Simpson, and he’s been part of groups like Them That Do. Over the years, he’s also been releasing quality instrumental projects at a steady pace, most notably his different “Jawn” collections. Starting in June, though, he took a step back and gave us a collection of some of his favorite material with A Jawn Supreme (Vol.

G Yamazawa is an emcee and poet born and raised in Durham, but he relocated to Los Angeles a couple of years ago. While he’s been at this for years, he caught some notice about three years ago, when his song “North Cack” spread as a hip hop anthem for his home state. Now that he’s on the West Coast, though, he’s joined up with the Beatrock family, and now he’s making his debut for the label with an EP called THINKPEACE.

Alan Evans is a musician who is best known as one of the founding members of Soulive. He has had a lot of projects over the years, including his own Alan Evans Trio. Most recently, he teamed up with keyboardist Kris Yunker to form a duo called The 7 Day Weekend, who now give us their first self-titled album. For the project, it’s simply Evans on drums and Yunker on keyboards, as they approach music with the idea of recreating the feeling of ‘60s and ‘70s cinematic scores.

J’Von is an artist from Seattle that has been putting out music since the mid-2010s. Over the years, he’s collaborated with people like Ackryte, Lakim, and Lido. Most recently, he released an EP in 2018 called orange suit. Now he’s back with a full-length solo album, Thunderboy. Thunderboy is a true solo album, in that outside of one track that is co-produced by grady, J’Von is handling all the production, all the rhymes, and even providing the artwork.

Australian emcee Thorts has been keeping himself busy this year, with a couple of shorter releases before pairing up with producer Joel Siméus as Thoel Simérville to release the full-length album Singer-Songwriter back in July. He wasn’t done though, as he now pairs up with German producer Smokey131 as Thorts131 to release another full-length album, Weightlifters. If you’re not familiar with Smokey131, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you hear on Weightlifters.

Homeboy Sandman is an emcee from New York that has been releasing music for over a decade. After a prolific run on Stones Throw, he hopped over to Mello Music Group last year when he released his album, Dusty. Now he’s back for his second on Mello Music, Don’t Feed The Monster. Over the years, Homeboy Sandman has oscillated between working with one producer on a project and using the piecemeal approach.

Illogic is an artist from Columbus who has been releasing music for about twenty years. Most recently, he dropped a re-interpretation of Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma called The Cosmogramma Interpretations EP. After all that he’s accomplished in his career, Illogic found new ways to challenge himself by expanding his skill sets and doing more as he went into his latest project. That means he’s not only rhyming, he’s also producing, along with mixing and doing the photography for Autopilot.