When people look to the history of hip hop and try to find the forefathers of the genre, one group that always comes up are The Last Poets. Formed in Harlem in May of 1968 for an event commemorating Malcolm X’s birthday, the group soon found themselves carving out their own unique artistic space, as they combined spoken word poetry with soul, jazz, and reggae. They continued on in some form or fashion for the next thirty years, finally going on hiatus in 1998.

Alex Jones, aka DJ Swole, is a young artist that’s rising in the Birmingham hip hop scene. Fortunately, he got hooked into the RDFND crew and K1NG ELJAY has teamed up with him to work on this EP to mark the occasion of his college graduation. Appropriately enough, they’ve decided to call it Graduation EP. The EP opens with a spoken word piece from DJ Swole titled “The Pen,” which puts Swole’s words right up front as he muses about the power of the word in 2018.

Three years ago, a young producer from Berkley named Mr. Hong gave us his debut EP, Colors. It hinted at some great promise, but he fell relatively silent as he finished his college degree. Fortunately, he remerged last year with one EP, long days.short years, that reflected on those college years, and then followed that up with another EP, Three Days Off, which reflected his life as he entered the workforce.

Damu the Fugemunk is a producer from Washington D.C. that has been putting out music for over a decade now. Last December, he gave us an excellent collaborative album with Raw Poetic called The Reflecting Sea (Welcome to a New Philosophy). He followed that up with an EP in February done in collaboration with an up and coming emcee from D.C. by the name of Flex Mathews. That EP, however, was just the teaser, as they’ve now come back with a full-length album called Dreams & Vibrations.

One of the things I love most about Stones Throw is those moments when Peanut Butter Wolf’s roles as deejay and record label owner come together. The most recent instance involves a guy named Prophet from the Bay Area, who put out one album back in 1984, Right On Time. This weird album of R&B/funk got lost in the shuffle, and his music career got put on hold. Flash forward to the early 2000s, and a deejay named Peanut Butter Wolf finds this album while digging through the crates at Groove Merchant in San Francisco, and he liked what he heard so much that the album found its way into Wolf’s deejay sets, which he played for years not knowing anything about the man behind the music.

Potatohead People is the partnership of Canadian producers Nick Wisdom and AstroLogical. The two originally made their recording debut with an EP back in 2013, and their last full-length release, Big Luxury, came back in 2015. Now the Vancouver-Montreal duo comes back with a new full-length, Nick & Astro’s Guide To The Galaxy. There’s a lot about this album that looks good on paper. Both Nick Wisdom and AstroLogical are talented producers with some solid releases under their belts that explore hip hop, R&B, and electronic music, and they’ve brought in some guests like Nanna.

Exalt the Anti is a relatively new group from Los Angeles featuring Gel Roc, Megabusive, and Deeskee. Last summer, they released their first album, Hip Hop Against the World. Now they’ve come back with a follow up EP, Failure To Comply. Exalt the Anti is exactly what you want from three Project Blowed veterans like these artists, and this EP is an extension of their first album is every sense. You get five new songs, produced by the likes of Awkward and Avatar, along with Megabusive and Deeskee, plus two remixes of songs from the album, “STORY MORALS” and “LA2THEBAY & BACK (featuring Rakaa Iriscience from Dilated Peoples).

Equipto is a San Francisco emcee who has been making music as a member of Bored Stiff and a solo artist for years. He’s collaborated over the years with artists like Otayo Dubb, Opio, and Andre Nikatina, amongst others. His latest collaboration is with a producer also from San Francisco, Brycon. Together, they have created a group called The Watershed, and now release their first album. One of the first things that will become apparent about this album is that this project is all about San Francisco.

Chris Orrick is the Detroit emcee formerly known as Red Pill, who worked both as a solo artist and as a member of the group Ugly Heroes. His last album under the old moniker came out two years ago, a loving tribute to his late mother, Instinctive Drowning. Now, he continues to strip down the barriers between him and his audience as he releases his first album under his given name, Portraits.

Brrwd is the label started by Ta-ku and Repeat Pattern a couple of years ago now to showcase lesser known producers that they liked. Most recently, they have featured artists like Charlie Abbot and Aktr. Now they turn their focus to a pair of Japanese producers, Fitz Ambro$e and Submerse, who team up to make an EP called Villa Rosa. The name of the EP might seem a little unusual for two artists working Japan, until you learn that this was the name of an apartment complex built in Shibuya, Japan in the sixties, following Tokyo hosting the Summer Olympics in 1964.