Day Tripper is an artist from Atlanta, formerly of the group Clan Destined and currently of The Difference Machine, all while maintaining a solo career as well. Just this past June, The Difference Machine released their excellent album, Unmasking the Spirit Fakers. Now Day Tripper has returned with a new solo project, What a Time to be DEAD. It’s funny how when an artist wears different hats, you might not think of them in a certain way based on your exposure to them.

Back in the early to mid-‘90s, Oxnard, California wasn’t on a lot of peoples radar. That was about to change though, as a fresh wave of hip hop talent was about to level up and drop some incredible records. Two of the biggest names of that era are the emcee known as Declaime, aka Dudley Perkins, and the legendary producer known as Madlib. Before either of them took off, they often recorded together.

Memphis Reigns is an emcee from the Bay Area who has been making music for years, and he’s coming off of a particularly prolific 2022. Last year, we saw him release Tokyo Time Machine with Shamon Cassette and Remshot, Reign Clouds with QM, Harikuma’s Revenge with Sankofa, Gumiho, and Track Record with Kid Forever. Not wasting any time getting back to it, he’s kicking off 2023 with another collaborative project, Kasan, made with producer D-Mitch.

Skyzoo is an emcee from Brooklyn who started releasing music in the mid-2000s. His first big break came when he teamed up with 9th Wonder to release the album Cloud 9: The Three Day High. Over the years, he’s gone on to work with everyone from !llmind to Apollo Brown to Pete Rock. His most recent project came in 2021, when he release All the Brilliant Things. Now he’s teamed up with D.

The Allergies are a production duo out of Bristol consisting of Rackabeat and DJ Moneyshot. They’ve been releasing music for about ten years now, with their last full-length album, Promised Land, coming out in 2021. There have been a few singles since then, and with the promise of their sixth album right around the corner, they now give us a new EP, Reconcile. It takes about half a second to dive right into what makes The Allergies work on Reconcile.

About five years ago, Chicago artists Joshua Virtue and Davis started a new experimental hip hop label called Why? Records. In that short time, they’ve released a lot of exciting and challenging projects that have made them a force to be reckoned with. While the roster has expanded as they’ve gone on, Davis and Virtue have remained great artists themselves who have continued to grow and improve with each release. Just this past May, Davis released an ambitious nine-minute single called “Portrait,” which included four different movements, production from Virtue, and a guest verse from Defcee.

Heiruspecs is a hip hop band that formed in St. Paul back in 1997. There have been some lineup changes over the years, but they still remain together today with Felix and Muad’dib on the mics, Twinkie Jiggles on the bass, dVRG on keyboards, Peter Leggett on drums, and Josh Peterson on guitar. The last we heard from them was in 2017, when they released a twenty-year retrospective collection called 20⁄20.

Little Simz is an artist from London who started releasing music at the start of the 2010s, but she has really hit her stride beginning with her third album, released in 2019, Grey Area. She followed that up with another acclaimed album just last year, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Now she has surprised everyone by dropping a surprise album at the end of 2022 that might be her best yet, No Thank You.

BlackLiq is an emcee from Richmond, Virginia who made his debut on Strange Famous just in 2021 with his breakthrough album with Mopes, Time is the Price. Now he is back with a new EP with producer Ohbliv, out on Man Bites Dog, What Will It Take. When you put a lot of yourself into a big, breakthrough project like Time is the Price, it can be nice to take a step back and do something a bit more simple, where the stakes are a little smaller.

MC Pauze is an artist from San Francisco with a relatively short discography, but he’s very much been welcomed into the fold by more established artists, working with groups like The Watershed, Justin’s Case, and Old Soul Kollective. He now drops his debut album on Solidarity Records, Through Time. To assemble the beats for this project, Pauze is working with producers Baghead, HandBeats, Dirty Harry, Brycon, Smooveez, NugLife, Hongo 1, Hi/Lo, and Mcstravick.