Maria Isa is an artist from Minneapolis who has been releasing music for about the last fifteen years, along with her work as an actress and activist in the community. Her last album came out two years ago, when she dropped Sasa. Now she has teamed up with producer YMMI to release an EP, Amor Universal. There are a lot of different side to Maria Isa that she’s shown us over the years, so you never know exactly what to expect from her release to release.

Skyzoo is an emcee from Brooklyn that has been releasing music for about the last fifteen years. His most recent project came out just last year, when he dropped an album with Pete Rock, Retropolitan. Now he comes back with a different sort of project, Milestones. The idea behind Milestones was simply born from Skyzoo looking around him and realizing that outside of a few key songs, there weren’t that many hip hop artists discussing fatherhood in a positive light.

Fort Wayne emcee Sankofa had a busy 2019, with three releases under his belt. He doesn’t looking to be slowing down in 2020, with one album, Glyde Drexler, already coming out in April. He now follows that up with a new EP, Weird Summer. For a lot of his projects, Sankofa likes to work with one producer at a time, with it be J.Dankworth, Agent Orange, or Chad Wesley Snipes, just to name a few recent collaborators.

Just over a year ago, West Coast jazz legend Roy Ayers gave everyone a scare when the 78-year-old musician was rushed to a hospital in Portland, Oregon, cancelling his appearance at the Soul’d Out Music Festival in the process. Fortunately, that’s all it turned out to be – a scare. And we can give thanks, because now he’s able to present his latest album, JID002. The title of the album stems from the naming convention of the new imprint from Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Jazz is Dead.

Third Root is the San Antonio trio consisting of emcees MexStep and Easy Lee and DJ Chicken George. The three have been cooking up their own brand of Afro-Latin hip hop for years, but it’s actually been four years since their last full-length album, Libertad. MexStep did release a solo album two years ago, the brilliant Resistir, but now it’s time for them to form like Voltron and drop a soundtrack for our times, Passion of the Poets.

Skipp Whitman is an emcee originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, but he relocated to Los Angeles a few years back. Most recently, he’s been releasing a series of freestyle mixtapes called USFV. Now he’s back with an EP for the summer months, Hermosa. Space has always been an interesting part of the equation for hip hop, and for Skipp Whitman, it’s doubly interesting how space and time have line up in his career.

Yaya Bey is a vocalist from Brooklyn who came up as part of the NuBlack collective along with artists like Sammus and Zenizen. It’s been a couple of years since we heard from her, and not just figuratively – her music was pulled from digital platforms, and she was relatively quiet on social media as well. Now, with very little fanfare, she has returned with a new album, Madison Tapes.

Sammy Warm Hands is an artist from Eugene that has been making music for about 20 years, with projects dipping into rap, folk, and punk. Over most of the last decade, he’s been mostly focused on his solo hip hop career, although there have been collaborations, compilations of old groups, and other projects along the way. His last release came last summer, when he released the challenging one-take-no-pause project, Peril (2019).

Ancient Astronauts are a production duo from Cologne, Germany, consisting of Kabanjak and Dogu. The two have been releasing music together for nearly two decades. Over that time period, they’ve worked with everyone from The Jungle Brothers to Zion I, as well as releasing instrumental material on their own. Most recently, they teamed up with emcee Azeem in 2017 to release the album Broken Puppets. Now they switch gears back to an instrumental project, this time joining up with the larger The Outlaw Ocean Music Project to release the album We Stand Our Ground.

Homage CVG is a producer from Cincinnati that is part of the Fort Ancient collective. He has been releasing music as a solo artist and as part of the collective for about the last five years. His most recent project came just this past May, when he released the color-themed instrumental project, Mr. Biv. Now he’s come back with a short tribute to the game of basketball, Weapons. It’s no secret that there is a big overlap in the Venn diagram between hip hop artists and basketball fans.