Genesis Owusu is an artist born in Ghana and raised in Canberra. Owusu had been recording for a little while, making songs with his brother, Citizen Kay, along with a few other guest spots, before releasing his debut EP in 2017, Cardrive. He finally released his debut album, Smiling With No Teeth, in 2021 to great acclaim. A genre-bending tour de force that came together way better than most artists’ debut albums, it was always going to be tough to follow that up.

Joshua Woolf is a guitarist/producer from London. He initially came on the scene as part of the rock group Hidden Charms in the mid-2010s. After the group disbanded, Woolf went off in a different direction as a solo artist making mostly instrumental hip hop, releasing his first EP, Convergence Vol. 1, in 2019. Most recently, we got another EP from him last November, Herbes de Provence. Now he’s back with a full-length album, Float.

Rico James is an artist from Vermont who has been releasing music for over a decade now. In that time, he’s released a lot of solo material, worked with artists like Jobu and Jibba the Gent, and been part of groups like Jade Relics and Kinetic Fource. This past April, he teased us with a 7” drop that he did in collaboration with Bronx emcee Rhinoceros Funk. Now they are back with their album together, Dialectical Ditties.

The Oscillators are a relatively new funk group from Seattle, led by drummer Olli Klomp. Not an official band yet, but more of a studio experimentation, Klomp brought in players from other local groups such as the polyrhythmics, Rippin’ Chicken, The Pulsations, Lucky Brown, The Trueloves, 45th Street Brass, and The S.G.’s. However they want to define themselves at this point, these musicians came together to record a self-titled album under the name The Oscillators.

Jovan Landry is an interdisciplinary artist from Chicago who started releasing music about a decade ago. While we’ve gotten some singles here and there over the past couple of years, Landry’s last EP came in 2020, when she released World Vibe. Now she’s back with a new EP, Intellectual Frequencies. For the project, Landry is handling all the production duties as well as rhyming. Across the six songs on the EP, Landry is laying down a nice variety of beats, from some dark and gritty modern hip hop to some dance-influenced production to some sweeter R&B vibes.

The Madlib Invazion Music Library Series was established by Madlib and Egon over the course of the pandemic, created with a desire to give their creative friends a place to have the freedom to create without any limitations or expectations. The only constraints were that it had to work as a stand alone album, and it had to work as a one-stop, easy-to-clear source for background music in film and television.

Sargeant x Comrade is a duo from Calgary consisting of vocalist Yolanda Sargeant and producer Comrade. They released their first album as a duo, Magic Radio, on Black Buffalo Record in 2020. They released their sophomore album, The Elephant in the Room, in 2021. Since that time, we’ve gotten singles, remixes, and instrumentals, but now they are back for round three with their latest album, Lo Fi Future. Years ago, I had a conversation with producer Fresh Kils, who brought up his three-album theory with me.

Ritmo Machine is the collaboration between Beastie Boys/Cypress Hill percussionist Eric Bobo and Chilean DJ/Producer Bitman. The two originally connected and released their first album together in 2011, Welcome to the Ritmo Machine, a star-studded affair that featured appearances from Ana Tijoux, Sen-Dog, Chali 2na, Money Mark, and more. We hadn’t heard from them since, until earlier this year when they started dropping singles, hinting at a new project in the works.

Daedelus is an artist that came up as part of the electronic music scene in Los Angeles in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. It’s been a long and winding career, but one of the things that makes Daedelus a special artists is that they’ve never stopped pushing and challenging themselves to create different projects that aren’t just going through the motions and giving us the same old stuff we’ve heard before. Case in point, about a year after releasing an album at least partly inspired from becoming a parent, Daedelus went out and did an artist-in-residency with SETI, resulting in one of the most grand and ambitious albums of their career, Xenopocene.

Busfoot is a producer from Kansas City who has been releasing music for about the last five years. In that time, he’s made an album with Bay Area emcee Paavo, and he’s also released a handful of beat tapes. Now he steps out with his first full-length solo album, FOOT FED ISH. Producer solo albums can be a tricky endeavor, especially when we’re talking about a debut album. For Busfoot, he played it smart by not overthinking things, and just doing what he does best as a producer.