As the year and decade winds to a close, a lot of artists are going back through the vaults and putting together different collections and compilations of unreleased material, collaborations, remixes, and so forth. Some of these span more years than others, depending on the artist and how long they’ve been at it. When it comes to Lex the Lexicon Artist, she might be relatively new to the game, but she has hustled hard and collaborated with a lot of different artists in just the past two years, enough to warrant a twenty-song collection of collaborations that she’s calling The Ultimate Collexion.

C.Shreve The Professor is an emcee from Asheville and part of the group Free The Optimus. He’s been going strong both as a solo artist and as part of the group all decade long. His last solo effort, Lost Love Found, came out a little over a year ago. Now he comes back with one of his strongest efforts to date, Grown. As you might imagine, this album is not only about being a veteran in this rap game, but just being grown in general.

Sole has been making hip hop consistently for over two decades now. Five years ago, he first teamed up with Madison producer DJ Pain 1 to make an album called Death Drive, and then followed that up in 2016 with Nihilismo. Since that time, Sole has undergone some major life changes, including moving from Denver to Maine and starting a family. While his collaborative relationship with Pain 1 went on hold, his solo career didn’t skip a beat, with two self-produced solo albums, with Let Them Eat Sand coming out last year and Destituent landing just this February.

DJ Shadow is a pioneering producer, mostly known for his groundbreaking instrumental work in the ‘90s. Since that time, the Bay Area artist has released a variety of different projects. His most recent effort came in 2016, when he released The Mountain Will Fall, an album that was mostly instrumental, but contained the breakout single “Nobody Speak,” with Run the Jewels. Now, he comes back with his most ambitious project in years, Our Pathetic Age.

Mark Katz is Professor of Music at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, best known for his previous two books, Capturing Sound and Groove Music. Since publishing Groove Music in 2012, Katz went on to develop a cultural diplomacy program through the U.S. Department of State called Next Level. He now presents his experiences with that program and a larger look at cultural diplomacy in his latest book, Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World.

Kathy Iandoli is a veteran music journalist, having written for publications such as Vibe, XXL, and The Source, and edited for AllHipHop.com and HipHopDX.com. While there have been plenty of books about hip hop written over the years, there hasn’t been any real effort to chronicle the history of women’s contributions to the music. Iandoli noticed this, decided to do something about it, and now presents God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop.

One Be Lo is the Pontiac emcee/producer who we know as one half of the group Binary Star, but he’s also had a stellar and prolific solo career as well, going back to the early ‘00s. Last year, Binary Star gave us an ambitious double album, LIGHTY/EARS APART, which was full of live instrumentation and guest artists, with One Be Lo steering the ship and building this sci-fi hip hop universe.

Blockhead is a producer from New York that has been going strong for about two decades now, collaborating with everyone from Aesop Rock to Illogic to billy woods, along with some widely acclaimed instrumental work as well, namely his five-album run on Ninja Tune from 2004-2012. Since that time, Blockhead has been working more with emcees and pushing himself to try some different types of instrumental projects, to varying degrees of success.

F.Virtue is an emcee from New York who garnered some attention with the digital release on Fake Four of the 2013 album, We Are Not The Shame. In 2016, there was a series of singles released through Paper Magazine and an EP released in response to the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, but we’ve still been waiting for that proper follow up to that last album. Now the wait is finally over with Millennial Love in WWIII.

JSOUL is a vocalist/producer from Baltimore who has been releasing for over a decade. His most recent release came in 2016, when he teamed up with emcee Wordsworth to produce the album Blame It On The Music. Now he comes back with an ambitious solo album, his first released on his own label, BSMP, Neutronic Suite. Neutronic Suite is a concept album that is supposed to represent JSOUL’s journey from vocalist to producer.