Back in 2016, Atlanta label Full Plate started a beat series called Clean Plate Club, with the first volume coming courtesy of Jacksonville producer Paten Locke. Shortly thereafter, we got contributions from Willie Evans Jr. and Batsauce. Then people got busy with other projects, especially with Dillon, who released a collaborative album and EP with Batsauce, and a full length solo album as well. Now he’s ready to pick up the Clean Plate series and give us his own beat tape.

OneWerd is a Bay Area emcee/producer who has been releasing music for years, and he has been especially busy lately. Just last year he released his full-length album, Timeless. Just last week, he released a collaborative EP with Dan Dillinger under the name of TXTMS. If that wasn’t enough, he just dropped a surprise EP, everything’s fine, i guess. If you’re familiar with OneWerd, you might be thrown when you hit play on this EP and hear the title track to start things out.

ShowYouSuck is an emcee from Chicago, best known these days as part of the group Air Credits alongside Hood Internet. Recently, he paired up with a different Chicago producer, Walking Shoe, best known as one half of the group Bad Ambassadors alongside Rich Jones. Together, they have crafted a new EP, BUMMER. For this EP, Walking Shoe is channeling a sound that is reminiscent of the New Wave and Synth Pop of the early ‘80s and filtering that through a hip hop lens.

Amerigo Gazaway is best known for his amazing mashup projects, such as Fela Soul, The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon, and Yasiin Gaye, just to name a few. However, he is so much more than that, working on scores for documentaries and video games, collaborating with other artists, and even just original solo material. As we head into these uncertain times, Gazaway gives us a soundtrack with Solitude. Don’t fret – Solitude isn’t going to make you feel sad or lonely or anything of the sort.

Sinitus Tempo is a producer from Mount Rainier, Maryland who has been working at a steady and prolific pace for over a decade now. Case in point, his last release, BUD, came out just this past December. Now he’s already back with a new album, Heavens Footprint. Over the past ten-plus years, there have been so many mediocre instrumental downtempo releases, it really did a disservice to the subgenre. I get that it’s an easy way for amateur producers to get their feet under them, but once upon a time, those were just demos that only a few people heard.

Back in 2013, Los Angeles artist Adrian Younge started working on a project with A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad. That went on hold when they got the call to work on Luke Cage, but eventually they released their debut album as The Midnight Hour in 2018. They haven’t stopped there, either. Now launching a new imprint, Jazz is Dead, they’ve been quietly working with some legends to help them create some new material.

Fort Worth artist Tornup is probably best known as the emcee who gave us last year’s brilliant You Will Never Understand (The State of Soul). If you had been paying attention to his career for a longer time, you might also know that he’s nice with the beats. Well, that doesn’t matter anymore, because know you can get a crash course with his latest beat tape, Touristic Sonics. As one might do under quarantine, Tornup started to go through his files to take stock of different musical ideas that he had recorded.

Back in 2016, producer Big Deep of the New York production team known as 2 Hungry Bros. was talking with fellow producer Dirt E. Dutch, when the conversation led to emcee Breez Evahflowin’. After an extended hiatus, they knew he had recently started making music again. Before they knew it, Dutch had put Deep and Breez together, and they producer the 2017 EP Bring Out Your Dead under the name Deep Breez.

Chicago/Minneapolis emcee Psalm One has been one of the baddest to pick up a mic since the mid-‘00s, and she dropped a couple of the best albums of the 2010s, including the stellar P.O.L.Y. in 2015. As we enter the 2020s, and now into this quarantine, Psalm One is releasing an EP to tide everyone over, consisting of tracks she made with Brooklyn Producer Optiks (Blitz the Ambassador, Talib Kweli, Homeboy Sandman), Before They Stop Us.

Back in 2015, Open Mike Eagle and Serengeti paired up as the duo named Cavanaugh to release an EP by the name of Time & Materials. The pairing worked incredibly well, drawing on their Chicago roots and love of abstract lyricism. While both artists remained prolific in their solo careers, we never got any sort of follow up to this first EP. Well, as it turns out, they had started to work on a second project, never finished, and then sat on the material as they tried to figure out what they should do with what they had.