Yelir is a producer from The Bay who is part of the Children of Funk collective. He’s been releasing music for nearly a decade now, with his latest project, You Asked For It, coming out three years ago. Now he’s back with a new full-length album, The Unemployment Office. Looking at the cover to The Unemployment Office, it appears to be making a statement about the lack of employment opportunities for musicians during the pandemic, along with the lack of a safety net for gigging independent musicians.

Weighn Beats is a producer from Boise that has been going strong for years now, working along the way with emcees like Andy O. and Oso Negro, and as part of groups like Les Fortunate. The whole time, he’s also maintained a solo career, with his latest project, Hip-Hopumentary 2, coming in December of 2019. Now he’s back with a new solo album, It’s Just a Business. The title for this album doesn’t immediately announce the theme of the project.

Flupke is a producer from Strasbourg, France. You may or may not know him by his given name, Jérémie Revel, which he uses as a multi-instrumentalist in the funk group The Fat Badgers. Flupke, however, is a fairly young project that only released a couple of tracks before now. IOAHI now comes out on Black Milk Music as his debut EP. While Revel does make music as part of The Fat Badgers, do’t expect Flupke to sound anything like that.

trog’low might not be a name you recognize, but the Toronto producer has been releasing music for ten years now, slowly catching ears and earning the respect of those that have come across his music. Most recently, he participated in Ian Urbina’s Outlaw Ocean project, contributing the EP Kaifū. Now he’s teamed up with Los Angeles label Cold Busted to release his latest album, Midnight Calisthenics. When you do something really well, you don’t always have to do something new.

Perspeh One is an emcee/producer from Houston that has been making progressive hip hop for over a decade. She came on a lot of people’s radar back in 2016, when she released The Machine Mammal EP as part of Fake Four’s Freecember series. Included among those who took notice was the D/FW label El Gran E Records, who now team up with her to release her latest project, Zenith. Houston is well known for its contribution to hip hop culture and history, and so a lot of people think of a particular sound when they think of the city, probably chopped and screwed, or at least some gangsta raps of some kind.

Armand Hammer is the duo of ELUCID and billy woods, two of New York’s sharpest and most progressive artists over the last decade plus. Their first album as a duo, Race Music, came out in the fall of 2013. Since that time, they’ve been balancing solo careers and other collaborations with Armand Hammer. 2020 was an especially busy year for the two, with each artist releasing different collaborative albums, but also with their Armand Hammer album, Shrines.

Progeny is a producer originally from San Antonio but now based in Seattle. Over the years, he’s worked with groups like Chisme, hERON, and Ghost Palace, as well as collaborating with artists like Soultru. He’s also maintained a solo career the whole time, most recently giving us an instrumental EP called Wet Dreams on Valentine’s Day of last year. Now he’s back with a new instrumental EP, Waterfruit. The beats for Waterfruit were made by Progeny at the onset of the pandemic last year, as he watched his day job turn into a ghost town and leave him with a sense of isolation.

Batsauce is a producer originally from Jacksonville but now based in Berlin. He has been collaborating with artists and releasing solo material for years, but he’s showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. A month after delivering an album with emcee Qwazaar, Stoned Giant, he’s already back with a solo album, Wolf’s Clothing. Batsauce has given us a lot of different looks over the years, but for Wolf’s Clothing, he goes back to one of his earliest loves – jazz.

Kaidi Tatham is a British musician who has had a long and storied career, helping to craft the Broken Beat sound when he was part of Bugz in the Attic. Since that time, he’s continued to blur the worlds of jazz, R&B, hip hop, and dance music as solo artist, session musician, and producer/collaborator. His most recent release was an EP with soul singer Andrew Ashong called Sankofa Season. Now he’s back with a full-length solo album, An Insight to All Minds.

Yaya Bey is an artist from New York that has been making music for a few years now, first making some noise with NuBlack Music Group. Last summer, she garnered some acclaim for her self-released Madison Tapes, and intimate and politically minded project that spoke to the turmoil she and her friends were experiencing at the time. She has since signed with Big Dada, making her debut with the label now with an EP, The Things I Can’t Take With Me.