TOKiMONSTA is a producer from Los Angeles who is over a decade deep into her career, navigating her way through dance, hip hop, R&B, and beyond over the years. Her last full-length, Lune Rouge, came out in 2017. She now returns with her sixth album, Oasis Nocturno. Over the years, TOKiMONSTA’s career has been a little up and down. The good news, though, is that her downs have really just been mediocre instead of bad, but there have also been times when she has absolutely knocked it out of the park.

Back in 2012, the New York-based artist known as Zebra Katz had a viral moment with the single, “Ima Read.” That success was immediately followed up with a couple of EPs, mixtapes, remix collections, and guest spots. After that rush, Zebra Katz took a few years to lay low. Now he’s back and better than ever with a brand new album, Less is Moor. Less is Moor was written, produced, and recorded between London and Berlin, and that influence can be heard over the course of the album.

TXTMS is the collaboration between Bay Area artist OneWerd and Brooklyn artist Dan Dillinger. While they come from opposite sides of the country, their similar styles actually drew them together to form a group and invite a bunch of friends along for the ride. They now release their debut self-titled EP. A quick glance at the track list for the EP, you might think that this four-song collection is just a small sampler of things to come.

Big Mic Pereida is an emcee from Austin and part of the College of Hip Hop Knowledge collective. It’s been a couple of years since his last solo project, Optimus Rhyme, but now he comes back with a brand new project, It’s All Love??? While this is a solo album, and it definitely has Mic’s voice leading the way, I also can’t help but notice that it took a village to put this album together.

Clear Soul Forces is a group from Detroit that emerged in 2008, consisting of L.A.Z., Ilajide, Emile Vincent, and Noveliss, after a chance meeting with Royce Da 5’9. Since that time, the group hit the ground running, with a steady stream of albums, EPs, tours, and solo releases. After all this time, and juggling the careers of four different artists to keep everything together, the group has decided to call it quits with their final album, Forceswithyou.

R.A.P. Ferreira is the nomadic artist now based in Nashville formerly known as Milo. Over the years he has built up quite the discography, and one of his favorite collaborators over that time has been Los Angeles producer Kenny Segal. Segal himself has a project called Jefferson Park Boys, which is his collaboration with Aaron Carmack and Mark Parvizi, which involves live instrumentation and hip hop production. Now, everything has aligned so that we get a full length album with R.

There are two artists from Columbus, one who goes by the name Happy Tooth, and another who goes by the name of Dug. Sometimes they release solo music, but other times they work together. When they perform together as a full band with backing musicians, they go by the name of Happy Tooth & Dug. When they are just working as a duo, and perhaps an outside producer, they go by the name of Dug & Happy Tooth.

ShrapKnel is the duo consisting of long time friends and collaborators PremRock and Curly Castro. They marked their official debut as a duo last September, when they released their first EP, Cobalt. Now it’s time for their first full-length album, which is self-titled. For their first album, ShrapKnel turn to another friend, ELUCID, to produce the album. A lot of people probably think of ELUCID as an emcee first, because he’s got a big personality on the mic, but he’s been really ramping up his production credits as of late.

Thorts is an emcee from Australia who has been making music for a while now. He was busy in 2019, with the release of a couple of EPs, the most recent being Chrysalis back in September. Now he’s teamed up with German producer Noblonski to release another EP, Beautiful Chains. While this EP is only three songs long, the duo of Thorts and Noblonski make up for it by going deep with the material.

Emcee MiKE L!VE is an Asheville emcee best known for his work with the group Free The Optimus along with C. Shreve the Professor and DJ Jet. While the group has been going strong for years, L!VE has been on a solo kick as of late, dropping an album and an EP just last year. Now he keeps that momentum going with another EP, One Giant Leap For Mankind. Sometimes you don’t need to overthink things.