BLKrKRT is a producer from Fort Worth who has been releasing music for about ten years, collaborating with artists like Tornup along the way. He is an artist who always has at least a few projects going, or at least has some interesting music in the vault. In November of last year, he gave us a collection of unreleased loops, breaks, and chops called Black Rock & Roll, which was all material that was recorded back in 2014.

Gel Roc is an L.A. emcee who is part of the Project Blowed scene and has been putting out music since the mid-2000s. As well as working as a solo artist, he’s recently been collaborating with AWOL ONE as the group The Cloaks, who released an album, A Cloakwork Orange, earlier this year. Now he’s back an album done in collaboration with DJ JahBluez, Poetry of War. With a title like Poetry of War, you might expect a hard hitting political album, but the truth is that this isn’t an overtly political album.

John Klaess is an independent scholar based in Boston. His first book is now out on Duke University Press, Breaks in the Air: The Birth of Rap Radio in New York City. One of my favorite types of hip hop books are those that find a unique angle that hasn’t been explored in full before. As soon as I saw that someone had written a book on the history of rap radio in New York, I had to stop and think before I realized that this was a subject matter that usually only got mentioned here and there when others were telling the history of hip hop, usually just when a major event happened.

Isatta Sheriff is an emcee from London who actually released her first single back in 2006, but her career didn’t really take off until the release of her self-titled album in 2016. Most recently, we got an EP last year called A Kind of Biography. Now she has teamed up with producer Koralle to release a new EP, Eat the Kiwi Skin. Koralle is a producer from Bologna who has been releasing music since 2019, mostly on Melting Pot.

Emancipator is a producer from Portland, Oregon who has been releasing music since the mid-2000s. We last heard from him when he dropped a collaborative EP with Austin guitarist/producer Cloudchord last year, Citrus Fever Dream. Now he’s back with a full-length album, this time done in collaboration with Portland producer/violinist Lapa, 11th Orbit. Lapa has been playing with Emancipator for over ten years as part of his live ensemble, so the two have a long established chemistry.

Adam Scone is an organist originally from Youngstown, but now based in Miami. He got his start in the late ‘90s, and over the years has played in groups like Sugarman 3 and JJ Grey & Mofo. In 2008, he debuted his small combo known as Scone Cash Players, releasing the album The Mind Blower, putting the Hammond organ in the forefront of the project. After that initial release, Scone once again got caught up with various other projects, but Scone Cash Players made a return in 2018 with Blast Furnace and turned right back around with As the Screw Turns in 2019.

Sam Redmore is a deejay/producer from Birmingham, UK who has been making a name for himself over the last few years with his remixes, putting his spin on artists like Amp Fiddler, Renegade Brass Band, and DJ Vadim, just to name a few. Starting in the fall of last year, he started to tease us with a few singles, hinting at something bigger on the horizon. Now his debut album is finally here courtesy of Jalapeno Records, Universal Vibrations.

andrew is an artist from Philadelphia who started releasing music in 2019. In 2020, he made his debut on Cold Rhymes with his Necessary People-produced album, WOTW. His most recent release came just this past February, when he released his self-produced album, The Rain Knows What It’s Doing, on Three Dollar Pistol Music. Now he’s back with a new collaborative album with Zilla Rocca, Don’t Wait For Me To Leave.

Butcher Brown is a five-piece group from Richmond that has been releasing music since 2013. Since that time, they’ve developed a reputation as an exciting live act that combines jazz, funk, R&B and hip hop. Most recently, we got their Encore EP a little over a year ago. Now, we get a taste of a new project and direction for the group as they release Presents Triple Trey featuring Tennishu and R4ND4ZZO Big Band.

Rhys Langston is an artist from Los Angeles who has been releasing music since the mid-2010s. In fact, it was in 2014 that Langston released a project called The Chocolate Davis Sessions Vol. 1. Of course, any time someone includes “volume 1” in their title, people are always going to wonder when volume 2 is coming and how it will pick up where volume 1 left off. Well, for years, Langston went to work on a myriad of different projects, including last year’s very experimental Stalin Bollywood album.