Sareem Poems is an emcee from Michigan who has been releasing music for twenty years. In that time, he’s found that collaborative projects work really well for him, releasing projects with producers such as Terem and Ess Be. Most recently, he released an excellent one-two punch of albums done with producer Newselph, 88 to Now and The Art of Living. Now he’s teamed up with another producer by the name of Madi to release an EP, Hopefully.

MichRyc is a producer/guitarist from Poland. Prior to starting his music career, interestingly enough, he was a three time freestyle football champion. Now, as he turns his focus to music, he releases his debut album on Cold Busted, Under the Surface. When it comes to an instrumental hip hop release like Under the Surface, especially a debut album, you don’t necessarily need the artist to reinvent the wheel. You just need them to establish that they have a firm grasp of the music they like to make, a good musical foundation, and soom room for growth.

London-based vocalist Deborah Jordan has been critically acclaimed over the years, and along with her solo material, she’s worked with artists like Kaidi Tatham and the jazz group Panacea. Her most recent release was a collaborative project with K15 called Human, which came out this past May. Now, Futuristica Music has gone back to the beginning with Jordan, reissuing her 2009 debut solo album, The Light. The period between 2005-2010 remains one of the weirdest in pop music history, not just in the way that not only were a lot of sounds shifting, but also in the ways that it became harder to discover independent music as all of the distribution models were shifting.

Providence emcee jesse the Tree has been releasing music for about the last five years. Just this past August, he officially made his debut on Strange Famous with his album, Pigeon Man. Now he is back to follow that up with a short EP, Treely Dan. How do you follow up the biggest album of your career? Well, if you’re jesse the Tree, you come right back with an EP done in collaboration with producer .

Flevans is a multi-instrumentalist, deejay and producer from Brighton, UK, who has been releasing music for over two decades. While we’ve gotten a handful of singles and EPs from him in the last couple of years, his last LP, Part Time Millionaire, came out in 2019. Now he’s back with a new full-length, A Short Distance to Fall. It doesn’t take long in listening to A Short Distance to Fall to realize that you are in good hands.

Maki is a Canadian producer who has been putting out music for the last two decades. In that time, he’s worked on a lot of different projects, but he’s probably best known for his collaborative albums with Kay the Aquanaut. His most recent project was done with another longtime collaborator in soso, who worked with him to create If and Only If. Now Maki is back with a solo instrumental project, American Road Films.

Lt Headtrip is an emcee/producer originally from Ohio, but it was in New York where he really started his career and where the group of artists known as The Karma Kids coalesced about fifteen years ago. During his tenure in NYC, he found a place in Queens on Steinway Street where he built his studio and home. For his latest release, Headtrip is taking us back to that place and time with a bunch of previously unreleased material recorded in that studio, giving us an album simply titled, Steinway.

Lincoln, Nebraska artist Sleep Sinatra has kept himself busy in 2022. So far this year, we got an album done in collaboration with KNGKVMI, BRAINSTORMZ, a beat tape from his production alias, SINAI, and another album done in collaboration with Ohbliv, Shadow Self. As it turns out, he wasn’t done, this time returning with an EP done in collaboration with Mississippi producer Don.Carrera, X-CALIBUR. One of the nice things about the year that Sleep Sinatra is having, he can release a project like this without worrying too much about it’s accessibility.

R4PC4MP is an amorphous group from Portland, Oregon, built around the core of Claud Six, Blake Ambrose, and Kurn’t Cobain. They released their first album, Somebody Gotta Hold the Balloons, in 2018. In 2021, they reached all the way to Columbus, Ohio to team up with Dug & Happy Tooth to make an album called Just Outside America’s Test Market. As we wait for the next proper album, we get an interesting collection of new material and remixes called Sales Pitch.

ePP is an emcee from Portland, Oregon who first came up in the group TxE alongside Calvin Valentine and Tope. He’s been working as a solo artist for about the last ten years, with his last solo album, There’s a Place for People Like You, coming in 2019. Now, after teasing us with a few singles, he’s finally back with a new album, Fold. ePP provided the explanation for the title of the album by explaining that it is an acronym, standing for “Figuring Out Life’s Difficulties.