The last time we heard from Baltimore producer Tek.lun was last May, when he teamed up with Queens producer DrewsThatDude to release No More Favors. Now he’s back with a solo effort, Allow It!. Allow It! is an instrumental release that feels a little bit stuck in the no-man’s-land between beat tape and full-length album. It’s definitely closer to a fully formed album, with the tracks much more realized and developed than on your typical beat tape.

Cyesm is a producer from Le Mans, France, who has been making and releasing music for about twenty years now. Just last year, we got two projects from him, Times and Places and Dramacology. Wasting no time getting 2018 started, he comes back with his Bristol EP. One of the great things about following someone like Cyesm, is that he’s covered so much ground in his career, you never know exactly what you’re going to get from each release, you just now that it’s going to be good.

Andy Cooper is best known as one of the emcees from legendary Long Beach group Ugly Duckling. While the group has been quiet for several years now, Cooper delivered his first solo album, Room To Breathe, last February. He now comes back for round two with The Layered Effect. Cooper is best known as an emcee, but on The Layered Effect he also steps up and produces the entire album, with Sensi coming in to help on one track to co-produce.

GrandAce is a young artist from Dayton that’s made some noise in the past couple of years, with a few EPs and singles under his belt. His latest effort is an EP called Colors in the Office. GrandAce might be just 20 years old, but listening to this EP, you might someone a lot more experienced and mature. The youngster is producing, singing, and rhyming at a high level that sounds really polished and developed.

While we got the album Lord Steppington from the Step Brothers and Directors of Photography from Dilated Peoples back in 2014, it’s been seven years since we got a proper solo album from emcee/producer Evidence. Not to worry, though, because he’s finally back to close out his Weather series of albums with Weather or Not. The series started with his first solo album, The Weatherman, released in 2007, and then continued through 2011’s Cats & Dogs.

Noblonski is a producer from Berlin who has been putting out music since the beginning of the decade. He came to our attention just this past December, when he teamed up with three other producers from around the world – dsplay, rak., and marjen – to release the extremely interesting collaborative album, drmn. Now he’s back with a solo EP, The Colours EP. The Colours EP is a fairly straightforward concept for an instrumental project.

As you might be familiar, Scallops Hotel is the alter ego of one Milo, the emcee who dropped the best album of his career last year with Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?! To follow that effort off and to start out the new year right, he switches up names and gives us Sovereign Nose of (Y)our Arrogant Face. There are a lot of different reasons to use a different name or alter ego, but in the case of Scallops Hotel, one of the major forces behind it is to just put some music out and experiment with stuff without the weight of attaching the name Milo to it.

The Jefferson Park Boys is a group consisting of Los Angeles producers Kenny Segal, Mr. Carmack, and Mike Parvizi. The three artists have known each other for a while now, and have collaborated before, Casual Horns, Dogs, marks their first official release as a group. One of the first things that hit me as I listened to this release is just how great their chemistry is together. The biggest reason for that is that these three artists weren’t just emailing tracks back and forth, or taking turns laying beats down, they were actually in the same room together, feeding off of each other’s musical ideas, playing instruments, recording found sounds, and so forth.

Loden is a Belgian producer that has released albums on Mush and Circle Into Square. He also worked with Busdriver on his acclaimed album, Beaus$Eros. The last time we heard from him was just back in February of last year, when he released the album Tsar. Now he’s back with another project, Lift For Exits (Extinct). Over the course of his career, Loden has always kept his listeners on their toes, always switching up his approach with each project, and delivering music that challenges expectations.

Henry Canyons is an emcee based in Los Angeles that has been putting out music for a few years now, working with Backwoodz Studioz. His last full-length album, Canyonland, which came out in 2015, was produced entirely by the French producer Keor Meteor. A little over a year later, Canyons flew to Biarritz, France, to participate in a two-month long artist residency with BoiSakre productions. Now we finally get the results of this project, an EP called La Cote West.