Kristoffer Eikrem is a trumpet player, deejay, and producer from Oslo. A couple of years ago, he began exchanging messages with South Korean producer Beautiful Disco. As they continued to talk, they started to send beats back and forth between each other, thinking that they could collaborate on something. Once the ball got rolling, that something turned into a lot of beats, which they then pared down and turned into their first album together, Dusk/Dawn.

Jihad the Roughneck MC is an artist from the Bay Area who has been releasing music since the mid ‘90s, both as a solo artist and as part of groups such as Third Sight. He just released a solo album this past January called Namoratunga II, and now he’s already back with a collaborative EP with Montreal producer SENZ Beats, The Little Assassination Handbook. Most of the time, especially when you’re making a full-length album, you want to come with a lot of different approaches to give listeners some variety and to take them through the ups and downs of various emotional and intellectual experiences.

BLKrKRT is a producer from Fort Worth that has been quietly making some really progressive electronic and hip hop music for the last ten years under various names. He recently came on our radar when he teamed up with fellow Fort Worth artist Tornup to deliver the concept album Hologram Zoo. Now he has returned with an ambitious three EP solo set, Black Siddhartha IV-V-VI. If you’re wondering where the boundary pushers in hip hop and electronic music are today, one of them is living in Fort Worth, Texas.

This past December, Portland (Maine) artist Myles Bullen dropped a heavy project by the name of Healing Hurts that allowed him to work through some grief over a few significant losses in his life. Now that he got that off of his chest, he’s come back with a more fun project, and EP with Producedbygeorge called clementines & mason jars. While the title might give you more of an indie folk vibe, it won’t take long to get into the hip hop of this release.

The Lasso is a producer from Michigan who has been making music under the name for about a decade. He came to the attention of most hip hop fans through his work with Lando Chill, but since the release of Black Ego in 2018, The Lasso has gone on a run, dropping a solo album, then collaborating on albums with Psyspiritual, Chris Orrick, and ELUCID. This year, he’s come back with a new solo album, 2121.

iLL Sugi is a producer from Japan that has been releasing music over the last ten years. In that time, he has worked on a lot of collaborative projects with different artists, including Fitz Ambro$e, Budamunk, and Dregs One. Over the course of the last few years, as Sugi visited the Bay Area, he struck up a relationship with Brycon. As they got to know each other, it was only a matter of time before they made a project together, which is now here in the form of Music for Indoor Cats.

Beatween is the collaboration between Quebec artist Raycord and French artist Mael. They first came together under this name back in 2016, when they released the album, The Ocean Between Us. Now after working on multiple projects over the last couple of years, things have finally lined up for a new album, No Street Noise. If you’ve spent time with the first album, or any of these two artists’ other projects, you know that Beatween is about subtly in composition and expanding people’s musical palates through their downtempo instrumental hip hop.

At the beginning of 2020, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge launched Jazz is Dead, an imprint devoted to elevating the elder statesmen of jazz, giving people like Roy Ayers and Doug Carn a chance to record all new material and maybe find a younger audience. After a successful first run of albums, Younge is now taking us on a bit of a detour for the label as he drops his ambitious new solo album, The American Negro.

Bad Colours is a producer and deejay who was born in London, raised in Maryland, and now resides in Brooklyn. Over the last ten years, he’s built up quite a following as a deejay, but hadn’t really recorded much in the way of original music. Now that the pandemic has kept him home and out of the clubs for the last year, we finally get his debut album via Bastard Jazz, PINK.

A.M. Breakups is a producer formerly based in New York, but now based in New Orleans. Over the years, he’s been part of groups like Cult Favorites and We Are Not For Them, as well as maintaining a solo career. His last solo release came two years ago, when he gave us the fourth volume of his Architecture set of releases. Now he’s back with a new EP, O G B.