In April of 2017, we got the debut EP from a new group called The TroubleShooters. The duo, featuring Mikal kHill and int eighty, had been friends for years and worked together here and there over the years, but after exchanging emails and sharing ideas online, eventually int eighty took a trip to kHill’s home studio and they knocked out the songs for the EP, Lead Time. As to be expected, the two artists soon got swept up in different projects and life in general (as well as a global pandemic), but in 2022, they finally got back on the same page and started to work on their first album as duo in earnest.

Cloudchord is a producer/guitarist from Austin who has been releasing music since the mid-2010s. In that time, he’s worked with artists like ProbCause and Emancipator, and he’s been on labels like Chillhop and Loci, just to name a few. His most recent release came in September of last year, when he released an EP called Sundrop. Now he’s back with a full-length album, Bloom Bap. Bloom Bap is an easy album to listen to, but it’s far from an easy task to pull of an album like this.

s.al, fka Safari Al, is an artist originally form Milwaukee, but he’s calling Minneapolis home these days. He’s been releasing music for over a decade now, striking a unique path as part of the ruby yacht crew. Just this past January, he released a project called THE HEART GUIDES THE MIND…IT IS ITS TARGET. Now he’s back with a short project, more than human? For this project, s.al is working with producer WON POUND-O, a artist from Maine who has released a number of interesting instrumental projects over the last five years.

Yaya Bey is an artist from Brooklyn who has been making music for several years, but had a big break through last year with the release of her album, Remember Your North Star, which came out on Big Dada. Now she’s back to follow that up with a new EP, Exodus the North Star. Given the title of this EP and the cover (same photo shoot, different pose), you might expect this to be in conversation with her album from last year, maybe an extension of it.

Che` Noir is an artist from Buffalo, New York who has been releasing music for about the last five years. Her last release, The Last Remnants, came out in October of last year. Now she has come right back with another album, Noir or Never. To make this album, Noir is enlisted the help of producer Big Ghost Ltd, then got additional live instrumentation from Hector Puente Colon Jr & The Santiago Men’s Basketball Philharmonic Orchestra, and then getting cuts from D-Styles as well.

Fort Wayne artist Sankofa had an extremely busy 2022, with The Sonny Vaccaro Years, Never Easy, and VLTR KMBT all coming from October to the end of the year. It only makes sense then that he takes a couple of months off before coming back with a new collection of songs, Multitudes Vol. 1. If you’ve followed Sankofa’s career, you know that he is an artist that is big on collaboration, often working with producers and other emcees on specific projects to make music with certain sounds or themes that tie everything together.

small professor is a producer from Philadelphia who has been releasing music for about fifteen years. In recent years, he’s made albums with AJ Suede, Vic Spencer, and Curly Castro, just to name a few. The entire time he’s been working, he’s also been dropping all sorts of beat tapes and other instrumental projects as well, including his “Jawn” series. Back in February of 2020, he dropped a project called let’s go inside my astral plane.

Equipto has been a staple of the Bay Area hip hop scene since the late ‘90s, and over the years he’s worked with artists like Dregs One, Andre Nickitina, Opio, White Mic, and The Architect, just to name a few. His most recent album came just last year, when he teamed up with Brycon to make Can’t Stay Perched All the Time. Now he’s back with a new solo EP, Equinox.

Jeff Chang is a writer best known for his book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. H. Samy Alim directs the Hip Hop Initiative at UCLA, and is the author of Neva Again: Hip Hop Art, Activism, and Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Casey Philip Wong is Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, and author of the forthcoming Pray You Catch Me: A Critical Feminist and Ethnographic Study of Love as Pedagogy and Politics for Social Justice.

Low Leaf is an vocalist/composer/producer/harpist/keyboardist from Los Angeles who has been releasing music for a little over a decade now. In that time, she’s had a number of releases come out on Fresh Selects, but her last release, which came in 2019, was an album for Fat Beats’ Baker’s Dozen series. Now she is back with a new project, MiCRODOSE. Much like many of her other projects, MiCRODOSE finds Low Leaf handling all of the production, while also including live harp and keys, along with providing the vocals, making it a true one-woman show.