Back in April of 2018, Missoula emcees Wormwood and Tonsofun teamed up with the production team known as Ill Embassy to make an album called Speak Nay Scream. As it happens when you record an album, there were a lot of songs that were recorded but scrapped in the process. Now, about a year-and-a-half later, the artists let the rest of the material sit, and figured out which of those discarded songs stuck in their brains and might be worthy of rescuing.

Back in December of 2016, Detroit emcee Mister released a compilation of odds and ends called Ketchup (An Introduction). That was followed up in January 2018 with Mustard (A Continuation). Now, the trilogy of random singles collections is complete, as he now releases Relish (The Completion). Back in the day a release like this would probably have been called a B-sides and rarities comp, but what you need to know is that Relish is a collection of material from the recent past that Mister worked on that you might have overlooked.

Back in 2017, Doomtree emcee/vocalist Dessa performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, making it one of the most ambitious projects she pulled off in her career. That’s saying something for a woman who came up as part of an underground rap crew in Minneapolis, and has seen not only that crew blow up, but has seen her solo career take off and take to all sorts of unexpected places in the past ten years as she criss-crossed her way across genres, performance spaces, and platforms.

dubldragon. is the Bay Area duo consisting of emcee Skeptik and producer Danny G. They hit the ground running in 2014, when they released their self-titled debut album and began touring extensively. That said, for all of their live shows and guest spots, it’s been over three years since their last full-length album, Y Wulvz? Well, the wait is finally over, because Macroforms is here. The idea behind Macroforms comes from the works of William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, who is widely credited with pioneering the subgenre known as cyberpunk.

Sudan Archives is a musician from Los Angeles who took her stage name after studying Sudanese fiddle music and learning to combine that with modern R&B and electronic music. This unique yet accessible approach to music got her signed to Stones Throw, who have released two critically acclaimed EPs over the past two years. Now it’s time for her first full-length album, Athena. It’s interesting how Sudan Archives has already grown and shifted her sound so much just over the course of a two years, a couple of EPs, and an album.

Amerigo Gazaway has gained most of his notoriety over the years from his mashup projects such as Fe La Soul or The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon. In recent years, however, Gazaway has been focusing more on original production, with project like No Free Beats and Endless Summer. Now he switches gears once again, this time pairing up with vocalist Xiomara to release an R&B album, 1990. Xiomara is an up and coming vocalist out of Berkeley, who first got our attention with her Brycon-produced 2016 album, Seven Nineteen, which featured a lot of potential with a collection of hip hop/soul.

Ever since officially changing his name to Uncommon Nasa in 2013 for the release of Land of the Way It Is, the New York emcee and producer has really hit his stride, with a really inspired run of collaborative and solo releases, including such albums as Halfway and New York Telephone. His last album, Written at Night, came out in 2017. Now he comes back with a new album done in collaboration with producer Kount Fif, City as School.

Ten years ago, New Haven emcee/producer Sketch Tha Cataclysm teamed up with phenetiks member Deto 22 to release a collaborative project called Sharing is Caring, which was released by a small label called Little Ax Independent Media. A little after this release came out, the label went under, and subsequently the release disappeared from all streaming services. Now, on the ten year anniversary of the release, we get a chance for people to discover the project all over again as we get an expanded re-issue of Sharing is Caring.

Brother Ali has been a tentpole of the Rhymesayers roster since he released Shadows on the Sun back in 2003. Over the course of his career, the majority of the material he has released has been produced by Ant from Atmosphere, with the exception of Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color, which was produced by Jake One. Now, two years after his last album, All the Beauty in This Whole Life, Brother Ali has come back with a surprise album, Secrets & Escapes, this time produced by labelmate Evidence.

Back in December of 2016, the New York triple threat known as J-Live dropped the first of what was supposed to be a series of self-produced EPs called At the Date of This Writing (Vol. 1). Well, life doesn’t always work out like we plan, and since that time we’ve only gotten a random self-produced EP in October of 2018 called Lose No Time. Now, after all this time, things have finally lined themselves up for J-Live, and we finally get At the Date of This Writing (Vol.