Both Mega Ran and Noveliss have been at this hip hop thing for a minute, and the two have crossed paths and shared stages across the US and Japan. After all this time rapping on the same bill and sharing mutual loves like video games, wrestling, and anime, they have finally made an album together, Maverick Hunters. Those of you familiar with the Mega Man franchise might recognize that the term “Maverick Hunters” as the organization started by Dr.

Lincoln, Nebraska artist Sleep Sinatra has been on a bit of a tear lately, releasing a full-length album with August Fanon in December of last year, and then turning around and dropping another full-length album with Ed Glorious just this past March. He wasn’t done there, as he now comes back with a self-produced album, DIVINENATION. If you’ve spent the time with Sleep Sinatra, you essentially know what you’re getting from DIVINENATION, which is to say plenty of gritty and soulful mid-tempo boom bap beats and personal rhymes.

In September of 2020, Nashville artist Namir Blade made his debut on Mello Music Group with his wildly inventive album Aphelion’s Traveling Circus. It didn’t take long for him to pair up with another labelmate, as he’s already come back with another full-length album, this time produced by North Carolina artist L’Orange, Imaginary Everything. While Aphelion was an ambitious artistic statement that saw Namir Blade swinging for the fences and wearing a lot of different hats in the process, Imaginary Everything is just straight up fun.

Shrimpnose is a producer from Minneapolis who has been on quite the creative streak over the past couple of years. Just in 2020, he released two excellent full-length albums and an EP at the end of the year. Showing no signs of slowing down, he now comes back with a new EP done in collaboration with Joe Nora, Between Dunes. Joe Nora is a producer from Los Angeles who released his debut album, Fell in the Pool, in 2019.

Cyesm is an artist from France that has been releasing music for over two decades. Over those years he’s given us a wide variety of projects that range from classical to hip hop and everywhere in between. His most recent project came in 2019, when he gave us The Sinner and the Priest, a soundtrack to a whodunnit that only exists in the minds of the listeners. Now he’s back with a new full-length album, New Worlds.

Austin artist Curbside Jones and Baltimore artist Dexter Fizz have both been releasing music for roughly the last ten years. Like many of us, they have a story that begins with an innocent vision at the beginning of 2020 that was quickly derailed by the pandemic. In their case, they had connected and began to work on an EP that would then be used to fuel an international tour to Japan.

Fang Over Fist Records is a collective label based out of Flagstaff, Arizona, consisting mostly of Native artists using hip hop and other genres to speak to their lived experiences. One of the tent pole acts of the collective is the duo known as An Illustrated Mess, consisting of emcee Prosodic and producer Whatever Cecil (now known as Tsoh Tso). After releasing their debut album, Does It Matter?, in May of 2016, Fang Over Fist came back in December 2016 to release the debut EP of an artist named Tré Orona, Fuxgiven, also produced by Cecil.

You might know Dallas artist Harry Krum by just the name Krum, or maybe the alias he used years ago, Playdough. While he’s probably best known as an emcee, he’s been producing this whole time as well, often under the name Harry Krum. The one thing Krum hasn’t done over the course of his career is to deliver an album strictly as a producer with others rhyming over his beats. That is until now, because that’s exactly what he’s done with Black Lung.

Myles Bullen is an artist from Portland, Maine, who has been very busy as of lately. After delivering a deeply personal album in December, Healing Hurts, he came right back in February of this year with a collaborative EP with Producedbygeorge, clementines & mason jars. Now he’s back with yet another project, this time working with producer Mosart212 to release an EP, Looking For a Body. The nice thing about Bullen going through this many projects in such a short amount of time is that each project is so distinct from the rest.

Savannah/Athens artist Dope Knife is always working on something, whether it be the two EPs he dropped last year or running the smart and entertaining podcast Waiting on Reparations alongside Linqua Franqa. Now he’s back with some more new music, this time working with British producer Paul Abdul to release an EP called Am I Alive? Paul Abdul might not be a producer you’re familiar with, but one listen to Am I Alive?