bRavenous is an emcee from Halifax, originally of the group CVG, but he’s been going strong as a solo artist since 2012. His last album, Land of the Stranger, came out just about a year ago. He now returns with a new full-length, Between the Lines. Sometimes, when you put on an album for the first time it just feels familiar. This is the feeling I got the first time I pressed play on Between the Lines.

Variex is an emcee/producer from the Bay Area who has been releasing music for about the past fifteen years, collaborating over the years with the likes of Ceschi, 2Mex, and Alias. His most recent release came in 2018, when he released The Bread Crumbs EP. Now he’s back with a new full length album, Struggle Sandwich. For this album, it’s almost all Variex, with him not only handling the rhymes but also working drums, keyboards, samples, and talkbox.

drwg is a new group consisting of Rhys Langston on vocals, MXLX on synths, and Brian Miller on drums. The three artists from different backgrounds came together over a love of all music and an interest in experimentation and pushing boundaries. This is evident as they deliver their self-titled EP. Rhys Langston has given us a lot of different looks over the course of his career, but few projects approach drwg in terms of just pure abstract experimentation.

Credible Outcome is a new duo from Flagstaff featuring emcee Prosodic from An Illustrated Mess, and producer Cool Handz Luke from the Kingz of the Jungle collective. The two are officially making their debut under the name with a self-titled EP. Cool Handz Luke has been making beats for a while, and depending on where you came across his music, you might think of him more of a jungle producer. For this project, though, he’s coming through strong with some underground hip hop beats for Prosodic to rock on.

Manikineter is the alias of Philly artist Carl Kavorkian. It’s a name he debuted back in 2017, with an EP named Mannequin Eater. Through this EP, Kavorkian introduced us to a side of him that was noisy, distorted, and confrontational. He’s been on this lane ever since, having released a couple more EPs and singles since this time. Now he drops a full length album, Copper Fields. As with any sort of noise-rap project, if you don’t buy into the general style from the beginning of the project, this ain’t for you.

White Horse is the new duo comprised of old friends and collaborators, Acid Reign emcee Gajah and Uncommon Nasa. If you’ve been following the two over the years, you know that Gajah has put out solo material on Uncommon Records before, with Uncommon Nasa producing, so it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine them as a duo. Well, the cards finally lined up for them to make it happen, and now they present their debut self-titled album.

Bird Peterson is a producer from Austin that has had a long and winding career that goes back into the late ‘00s, making a splash with some of his remixes and at one point hooking up with Mad Decent to release his Drankenstein albums. These days, he’s starting a new chapter as he and fellow Austin producer BoomBaptist have launched Cream Dream Records, and not a moment too soon as Peterson now releases his third full-length solo album, I Am What You Am I Am.

Way back in 2012, there emerged a production group called Quakers, consisting of Fuzzface (Geoff Barrow), 7-Stu-7, and Katalyst. These three culled together an album, self-titled, which was an epic seventy minute journey featuring a guest list that ran the gamut from Dead Prez to Jonwayne to Sareem Poems, just to name a few. Now, after an eight year hiatus, the group has re-emerged with a beat tape, Supa K: Heavy Tremors.

Louisiana born, Austin-based musician JaRon Marshall is best known these days as the keyboard player in Black Pumas. However, just this past June, he made his solo debut on Cascade Records with The Gold Tapes, Vol. 1-3. He wasn’t done there, though, as he now comes back with an EP, The Black Power Tape. The great thing about the opening track of The Black Power Tape, “ACT I – Last June,”” is how powerful a simple message can be.

Moor Mother is an artist from Philadelphia that has been carving out a truly unique lane for herself over the course of the last five years, as she combines spoken word poetry and free jazz and noise into confrontational pieces of art about race and gender and beyond. She’s already released several smaller projects this year, including a few collaborations, but now she’s dropping one of her most ambitious projects to date, Circuit City.