While much of the Midwest has been putting their own stamp on hip hop for years, one city that hasn’t gotten much attention at all is Indianapolis. One duo that has been putting in the work over the course of this decade, though, is Cicada Shells. Comprised of emcee Lorax and producer Defame, they’ve been releasing music since the beginning of the decade, with their most recent album, Forest Noise, coming out in 2017.

A.M. Breakups is a producer who had been based in Brooklyn for years, but recently relocated to New Orleans. On top of his solo career, he’s also been a part of such groups as Cult Favorites and We Are Not For Them. In May of 2018, he released his first volume of unreleased instrumentals titled Architecture 1 | Babel. He’s been releasing volumes at a steady pace since then, because just one year later, and we are already on the fourth volume, Proud Horses.

Dope KNife is an emcee/producer from Savannah, Georgia who has been making music for over a decade, getting started with the Dope Sandwich collective. In more recent years, he’s been building his solo career, releasing an EP on Fake Four, and then his most recent album, NineteenEightyFour, on Strange Famous. Now he comes back on another significant indie hip hop label, Brick Records, to release his newest album, Things Got Worse.

One of my favorite things about the Twin Cities hip hop scene is how people put on for one another. This is all to say that long before I heard any of her music, I knew Lady Midnight must be good because so many people involved with the scene had begun singing her praises. Then she started performing as one half of the duo Parables of Neptune alongside Afrokeys. She was then named best vocalist by City Pages in 2017.

Mello Music Group has given us a lot of great American hip hop over the years, both instrumental and vocal, and has even ventured over the border into Canada to release an album from Elaquent. For there latest release, however, they really step outside of their box to release an international neo-soul album from Seba Kaapstad, Thina. Seba Kaapstad is a truly international group, a quartet consisting of one South African, one Swazi, and two Germans, who came together in Cape Town.

Haviah Mighty is a relatively young emcee from Toronto, but since she’s been going so strong from a very young age, it can be easy to forget. Her last solo album came two years ago, when she released Flower City, but there’s also a good chance you know her from her work with the supergroup The Sorority, also featuring Keysha Fresh, Lex Leosis, and at the time, Phoenix Pagliacci. Their debut album, Pledge, came out last year to much acclaim.

14KT is a producer from Michigan who has been releasing music for over ten years now. He gained a lot of notoriety when he released his album, Nickel & Dimed, on Mello Music Group in 2013. Over the course of his career, he’s been making great instrumental hip hop, and occasionally working with emcees. For his most recent project, though, he’s shifted his style to make a jazz album called For My Sanity.

Just about one year ago, the legendary New York group known as The Last Poets reformed after twenty years off to release an album for their fiftieth anniversary, Understand What Black Is. It was an excellent return to form for the group, one that saw them working with British producers Prince Fatty and Nostalgia 77 to explore a decidedly dub/reggae sound as they spoke to the race issues of today. Now they return to show that this reunion was not just a one-off thing, and that they still have much more to say about the times we are living in, as they release their latest album, Transcending Toxic Times.

Last spring, we got the introduction to a new group from Toronto called Tongue Helmet when they dropped their debut EP, The Brain on Fire EP. The group, consisting of emcee/producer Timbuktu, drummer Danny Miles from July Talk, producer/keyboardist Peter Project, and DJiRATE, quickly established themselves as a fun and talented outfit. The real question became whether or not they’d be able to stay together and reach their full potential. Fortunately, the answer is coming soon with their first full-length album, Psychotropic Ape, coming in July.

Aquasocks is the pairing of two Toronto/Hailfax artists, Backburner’s Ghettosocks and Aquakultre (or that is to say, Lance Sampson from Aquakultre – evolving names can be tricky). The two have been in each other’s orbits for a while, recently working together on “Get Ahead,” from ChanHays’ The Creepy EP. Now they have a project that’s all their own, HOLOS. For the project, Ghettosocks handles some of the production, while also bringing in some longtime collaborators such as Bix, Uncle Fester, and Goonie Beats.