Samurai Banana is an artist and member of the Karma Kids who has been around for several years, working as a touring deejay, dropping remixes and beat tapes, and co-hosting the Dope Shit podcast. After all this time, he’s finally releasing his debut full-length album on Uncommon Records, Just Tired. Samurai Banana is an artist who came up on East Coast underground hip hop, and it shows when you listen to Just Tired.

Mycelium Culture is a new group featuring a couple of artists who have been around for a minute, namely emcee Staplemouth/Killwendigo from Lawrence, Kansas, and producer 7th Galaxy from Toronto. They are part of the worldwide Cane Corso collective, which has long been home to some experimental hip hop. Mycelium Culture now make their debut on El Gran E Records with their EP, Microdose. Even if you aren’t familiar with the track records of these two artists, with a name like Mycelium Culture, you’re probably expecting some experimental hip hop.

Freddie Losambe is an artist from South Burlington, Vermont, who has been releasing music for well over a decade now. Just this past February, he released a self-produced EP called daydreams & folly. Now he’s connected with another Vermont artist, producer Rico James, to drop an EP called The Divine Comedy. Rico James is a producer from Burlington who has also been around for about a decade, and among his many collaborations, he is part of Jade Relics, alongside Elder Orange and Iame.

Roy Kinsey is an emcee/librarian from Chicago who has been releasing music for over a decade now. He had a real breakthrough with the release of two albums, Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey, in 2018, and KINSEY: A Memoir, in 2020. They were deeply personal works of art about finding his place in the world as a Black queer man in Chicago and dealing with past trauma. After putting so much into these albums, it could be tough to follow that up, but Kinsey returned last year with the EP Juke Skywalker Vol.

In December of 2020, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Miles Davis’ classic album, Bitches Brew, twelve London-based artists recorded at The Church Studios to pay homage by recording new material inspired by the spirit of this album. The result is an album they are calling London Brew, which is now being released by Concord Jazz. The twelve musicians who worked on this album are Benji B, Raven Bush, Theon Cross, Nubya Garcia, Tom Herbert, Shabaka Hutchings, Nikolaj Torp Larsen, Dave Okumu, Nick Ramm, Dan See, Tom Skinner and Martin Terefe.

B. Cool-Aid is a hip hop duo featuring Birmingham/Los Angeles emcee Pink Siifu and Long Beach producer Ahwlee. They made their debut with the release of BRWN in 2017, and then followed that up with an EP called Syrup in 2019. Now the duo is back with their most ambitious project to date, Leather Blvd. One of the things that makes B. Cool-Aid such an interesting duo is that both artists fluctuate between the accessible and the avantgarde, and you never really know which side of them you’re going to get until you listen to the music.

OG Aborigines is the New York duo of Rapswell and Squires. The group made their debut back in 2016, when they dropped Rice Krispy Treats, a tribute to the Stretch and Bobbito era. While the two worked on various projects, they came back together in 2021 to drop Future Primitive, a tribute to skater/musician Tommy Guerrero. Now they have returned once more with a tribute project, this time paying their respects to filmmaker Roger Corman with The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.

Lionmilk, aka Mokichi Kawaguchi, is a Los Angeles jazz pianist, composer, and producer who has been releasing music since 2016. He debuted on Paxico Records in 2018 with the release of Depths of Madness, and then moved over to Leaving Records in 2019 with the release of Visions in Paraíso, where he’s remained since then. His last album, O.T.S., came in August of 2021. Now he returns with another experimental project, Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222.

Negro Justice is an emcee from Nashville who has been releasing music for about the last five years. He took a big step forward with his career last year with the release of his ambitious album, Chosen Family. Not wasting any time building upon that success, he has paired up with producer JustVibez to make a new album, Art of the Craft. JustVibez is a producer who is also from Nashville, and as he states in the opening voicemail skit on the album, produced the majority of tracks on Chosen Family.

Aurora Dee Raynes is a group from London that started in 2012, when vocalist Danielle Kranendonk (aka DanDans K) teamed up with producer Stephen Raynes (aka Touchy Subject). After making their debut on Tru Thoughts with the single “Find My Way,” in 2018, the group expanded into a live band. They were joined by drummer/producer Tristan Williams (aka Tehbis), keyboardist Nicholas Johnson, bassist/guitarist Richard Summers, and guitarist/vocalist Yohan Forbes. They released a full-length album, Invisible Things, in 2021, and since then we’ve gotten a couple of remixes.