Mega Ran has been in the game for the better part of two decades, and in that time he’s accomplished a lot - dropping albums that helped bridge the worlds of nerdcore and indie hip hop, touring internationally, getting into the Guiness Book of World Records. It’s been a long journey, though, and there have been a lot of ups and downs. He finally put all of these experiences into a book, Dream Master: A Memoir.

Tornup is an artist from Fort Worth who has been giving us conceptual and challenging projects such as 2019’s You Will Never Understand (The State of Soul), which was a deep dive into the prison industrial complex. Last year, as we went into lockdown, he gave us an instrumental travel guide with Touristic Sonics. In 2021, he’s upping the stakes as he embarks on a three volume concept album with producer BLKrKRT.

Big Cats is a Twin Cities producer who is probably best known for his collaborations with artists like Guante, Toki Wright, Chance York, Homeless, and just last December, Lydia Liza. While he’s been busy working with other artists, he’s found the time to release a couple of solo EPs, but it’s been five years since his last proper solo album, What If It Doesn’t Get Better? Now he’s back with a new conceptual solo album, A Movie About the End of the World, Set in 1990s Las Vegas.

Qwazaar is an emcee from Chicago, best known as one-third of the group Typical Cats. Ten years ago, he teamed up with Jacksonville-raised, Berlin-based producer Batsauce to release an album, Bat Meets Blaine, and an EP, Style Be The King. Despite the warm reception to these projects, with each passing year it just felt like they were never going to get on the same page again and make that proper follow up that fans wanted.

After being a mainstay of the Austin hip hop community for over a decade, producer BoomBaptist has really upped his game in the last couple of years. In 2019, he released the full-length album Feel Yourself alongside vocalist Yadira Brown under the name Vapor Caves. In 2020, he released his long-awaited debut solo album, Boom Shakalaka, and launched a new record label with Bird Peterson, Cream Dream Records. He’s not slowing down in 2021, now coming back with a unique three-producer collaborative album with Elaquent and Juicy the Emissary, Komfort Food.

Cee Knowledge is an artist now based in Fresno, but most people probably know him under the moniker Doodlebug, when he was one third of the group Digable Planets. He’s been doing the solo thing for a while, and in recent years he’s been dropping some singles and mixtapes and side projects. Now it’s time for a proper full-length album, which comes to us in the form of The Calidelphian.

Chicago emcee Serengeti has been working at a steady clip for the better part of twenty years, and despite all the time and work he’s put in over the years, he still doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Just last year, he rebooted his Kenny Dennis franchise by introducing us to Ajai (which was then followed up with KDXMPC, which continued the narrative), gave us the adventurous collaborative album With Greg From Deerhoof, and The Gentle Fall.

Madlib is of course one of the most respected producers to come out of the underground, first getting his start back with Lootpack in the mid-‘90s, before setting out to go on one of the most creative runs hip hop has scene from an artist. You might expect him to slow down or fade into the background at some point, but just last year he was collaborating with Freddie Gibbs on the album Bandana.

Madison producer Chants has been making instrumental hip hop and electronic music for a little over a decade now. Last summer, we got a collection of previously unreleased beats from him, but it’s been two years since his last full-length album, Seven Spheres. Now he’s back with his second album on Astral Planes, Poly Pointillism. One of the great things about Chants is that he’s always pushing himself in different directions, and he takes the time to really absorb things and do them right.

Reginald Chapman is a trombonist/multi-instrumentalist/producer who has been making music for over ten years now, guesting on albums from Megafaun to Butcher Brown, as well as working with the No BS! Brass Band. He made his solo debut on Fresh Selects back in 2018, when he released the full-length album, Prototype. What a lot of people might have missed, though, was that in 2017, Chapman released an album under the name Pressure Fit, Toolong Tea, which allowed him to dive into his experimental electronic side.