Blue Sky Black Death was a production duo consisting of Kingston and Young God, formed in the early 2000s in the Bay Area. Over the years, they released their own instrumental music, but also worked with a whole slew of emcees, including artists like Jean Grae, Myka 9, Nacho Picasso, and Sadistik, just to name a few. In 2013, they released their last album as a duo, Glaciers. We didn’t know it at the time, but in 2017, the group announced an indefinite hiatus.

Swamp Thing is the three-headed Canadian group formed by Backburner emcees and producers Timbuktu, Chokeules, and Savilion. Now, they just released an EP along with Ghettosocks just this past August, so you might have thought that we’d heard the last of them for a while. You would have thought wrong, though, because Swamp Thing wasn’t about to break their streak of Halloween releases that goes all the way back to 2013.

Cloquet is a new group formed between Doomtree producer Paper Tiger and New York vocalist J. Gundersen. Together they’ve come together to make a debut self-titled album that marks a distinctly different project from anything else Paper Tiger has done. Over the course of his career, Paper Tiger has covered a lot of ground, whether it be as a solo artist or as part of Doomtree. He’s given us some bangers, but he’s also given us some instrumental down tempo, some experimental electronic music, and some music that moved into more of a house direction.

Amerigo Gazaway is a producer from Nashville best known for mashup projects like Yasiin Gaye or Fela Kuti. Gazaway is not a one trick pony, though, as he’s actually been making his own beats and rapping for years as well, they just haven’t gotten the same shine since his mashups took off. In 2016, Gazaway provided the score to a short documentary called No Free Walls: Art and Gentrification Collide in Bushwick.

Back in the early 2000s, a producer by the name of Edan from Maryland made a bit of a splash when he contributed a few notable beats for Mr. Lif, especially the song “Live From The Plantation.” Not too long after that, things culminated for Edan with the release of the critically acclaimed and wildly inventive solo album, Beauty and the Beat. However, outside of a 2009 mixtape, Edan was relatively silent since that time, and fans were left to wonder if they’d ever hear from him again.

Georgia Anne Muldrow is one of the most talented artists to emerge over the past fifteen years, working as a producer, vocalist, and emcee. She’s given us multiple projects that veer into house, hip hop, soul, and punk, and released albums on labels like Stones Throw, Ubiquity, and Mello Music Group, just to name a few. The last we heard from her was three years ago, when she gave us her excellent album, A Thoughtiverse Unmarred.

D. Horton, fka as Dave The Rapper, is an emcee from Columbus, Mississippi who has been releasing music for a few years now. Most recently, he’s been putting out a series of EPs called The Sessions. Now he shifts gears to drop a mixtape called Dungeon Baby. As you might have inferred from the title of this mixtape, this is D. Horton’s ode to the Dungeon Family, the Atlanta creative collective that gave us such acts as Organized Noize, Goodie Mob, and Outkast.

Kenny Segal is a producer from Los Angeles who has gained notoriety over the past few years, thanks to collaborations with Milo, producing tracks for Open Mike Eagle and Busdriver, and working as part of groups like the Jefferson Park Boys. Alongside all of this, he’s released a number of beat tapes and other small projects. The one thing that was left on his list was a proper full-length solo instrumental album, which he can now cross off his list as he presents Happy Little Trees.

Los Angeles artist Low Leaf has been carving out her own unique musical path since the beginning of this decade, as a harp player, producer, and vocalist. Each time out she’s made something different, but it’s always interesting. With her last album, Palm Psalms: A Light To Resolve All Darkness, which came out in 2016, was an ambitious jazz-inspired singer-songwriter’s album. Now she comes back with yet another different approach with her latest EP, PRiMiTiVA.

It’s been five years since we last got an album from London, Ontario emcee Shad, when he released the excellent Flying Colours. After releasing that album, Shad felt like he needed to close a chapter in his career and do some different things. This meant, amongst other things, hosting the TV show Hip Hop Evolution. After a few years, though, Shad got the itch to write again, but felt like he still needed to do something different.