Klassy is an emcee from Los Angeles who is part of the Beatrock family. She first made her debut appearance on Bambu’s Party Worker, and then made another appearance on Ruby Ibarra’s Circa91. She finally released her first EP, Dirty Cortez, in 2019. Now, as we wait for her next project, Beatrock is giving us this short collection of early tracks, The Ashtray Session (Circa 2012). When you hear Klassy rap on the mic, you might expect her to be older than she is, just because she has so much confidence and poise on the mic, and her lyricism speaks to a lot of grown issues.

Rico James is a producer from Burlington, Vermont. He has been releasing music for over a decade, often working with artists like Jobu and Jibba the Gent. Just last year, he teamed up with IAME and Elder Orange to form a group called Jade Relics, who released their debut EP, Mandarine. Now he’s back with a new solo instrumental project, Rico de Gallo. There’s no secret formula to Rico de Gallo - it’s a time tested recipe called a boom bap beat tape.

Limited Resources Label was launched last year by Wisconsin artists Chants and Gator Preserve with the fun idea that they would put out short releases by themselves and fellow producers with prompts limiting their resources and hopefully pushing their creativity to deal with those limits. After putting out EPs themselves last year, they now turn to Wisconsin producer drowt for LRL003. drowt is a producer/drummer who has mostly worked in ambient music for most of his career, so for this project LRL didn’t give strict instrumental or sample-based parameters, they simply challenged him to make a four-on-the-floor techno project.

Spectacular Diagnostics is a producer from Chicago who has been releasing music since the mid-2010s. In 2015, he announced his ambition with the release of an EP called RAW EXOTIC, which featured three tracks with Jerimiah Jae, Vic Spencer, and LongLiveCarl. From there, he expanded upon that to give us his album, RAW GAME, which was then followed up by RAW STUDIES in 2018. That led to RAW UNKOWN in 2020, which now brings us to 2023, and his most ambitious album to date, RAW LESSONS.

Benny Reid is a producer/composer/saxophonist from New York who has been releasing music for about the last fifteen years, with releases on Concord and Fat Beats, along with plenty of commercial work. After working with Jonathon Hay on an instrumental version of Follow the Leader that came out in 2019, he caught the attention of none other than Havoc from Mobb Deep. Havoc not only authorized Reid to reconstruct the landmark 1995 Mobb Deep album, The Infamous, he worked with him on the project that is now here, The Infamous Live.

Chillin’ Villain Empire is a group from Los Angeles whose roots go back to the mid-‘80s, when Riddlore and Jay Be Nice first started to collaborate together. Soon they started to fold in other members, and they soon became part of legendary scenes like The Good Life and Project Blowed. A lot of different members have come and gone over the years, but the name and the legacy have never really gone away, even if they’ve been dormant for certain time periods.

JWords is a producer from Brooklyn who came on the scene a couple of years ago, both as one-half of the group H31R alongside Maassai, and as a collaborator with Nappy Nina on the album Double Down. While she’s been doing that, she’s also been dropping all of these dope instrumental projects as well, with both Self-Connection and brainecho coming out last year. Now she’s back with another inventive project, moods.

Eddie Chacon is an artist who first got started back in the early ‘90s as one half of the soul duo Charles and Eddie, who had a hit with the single, “Would I Lie To You?” After their split at the end of the ‘90s, Chacon stepped away from the limelight for a while, mostly finding work as a photographer and creative director. In 2020, he finally stepped back to the microphone, working with John Carroll Kirby on his much anticipated solo album, Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, which came out on Day End Records.

Phoniks is a producer from Portland, Maine, who has been releasing music for the last ten years. While he’s probably best known for his collaborations with other Don’t Sleep artists such as Awon and Anti-Lilly, Phoniks has been releasing solo projects along the way this whole time. His most recent solo project came in 2020, when he dropped The Quarantine Tape. Now he’s back with a new solo album, Dreams.

In September of 2021, longtime Strange Famous artist Prolyphic made his return under a new name, Mopes, releasing a self-titled EP. On that EP, we were introduced to the two newest members of the Strange Famous family, Jesse the Tree and BlackLiq. As it turned out, Mopes and BlackLiq had already been collaborating, and just one month later we got the album Time is the Price, featuring BlackLiq on the mic and Mopes on the beats.