The Silversmiths is a group from Fort Wayne consisting of emcees Sankofa and JOHN?DOE. The originally formed over a decade ago, with their last official release coming in 2012 when they dropped their debut album, Ragnarok. While these two would continue working with each other over the years, usually a song at a time, it seemed like we might not ever get another official Silversmiths project. As it turns out, these two went to make an album together about four years ago, when they teamed up with a producer they knew by the name of Agent Orange.

Akai Solo is a relatively new artist from New York, having just started to release music back in 2019. That said, they certainly hit the ground running, having already worked with artists like Pink Siifu, billy woods, Duncecap, and Moor Mother. His most recent release came last year, when he dropped a full-length album with producer navy blue, True Sky. Now, as he prepares to release his full-length debut on Backwoodz Studioz later this year, he drops an introductory EP, Body Feeling.

In July of last year, SomeOthaShip Connect released In The Beginning (Vol. 1), a collection of previously unreleased songs recorded by two of Oxnard’s favorite sons, Declaime and Madlib, back when they were getting started from ‘93-‘96. While that was a treat itself, it also hinted at the possibility of at least one more volume of unreleased material. Well, we didn’t have to wait too long, as we now get In The Beginning (Vol.

Joe Nora is a producer from Los Angeles who has been releasing music since the mid-2010s. Most recently, he gave us an EP in January of this year called Field Trip Day, a short concept project that takes you through a rainy field trip day back in school. Now he’s back with a full-length album that marks his debut release on Friends of Friends, Toy Animals. If you’ve spent any time with Joe Nora’s music, you know he likes to make chill, downtempo instrumental hip hop.

Few artists can approach how busy Fort Wayne emcee Sankofa has been in 2022. After dropping Legacy Materials, KofaSoCalfragilistic, and BLKTCHP 2, he is already back with an EP done in collaboration with Bay Area emcee Memphis Reigns, Harikuma’s Revenge. For this project, Memphis Reigns and Sankofa enlisted the help of producers Chef Mike, phdbeats, OJ the Producer, and Profound. Together, we get a balance of boom bap beats that range from slightly dark to slightly psychedelic to playful and fun.

Bloodmoney Perez is an artist who has been putting out music for over a decade. He’s bounced around a little bit, but he’s now based in Alaska. Back in January of this year, he put out an album with producer Messiah Musik on Filthy Broke Records called Second-Hand Accounts. As it happened, there were a few songs that didn’t make the cut for the album, but Perez still believed in them and didn’t want to see them vanish.

Korea Town Acid is a producer born in Seoul, but now based in Toronto. She released her first full-length album, Metamorphosis, on URBNET in 2021. Not one to rest on her laurels, she turned right back around and gave us another album, Cosmos, just this past March. Well, she’s already back once again, this time with another full-length album, Elephant in the Room. In a short amount of time, Korea Town Acid has given us a lot of different looks with her releases.

Emcees Curly Castro and PremRock had been friends and collaborators for years before they officially debuted as a duo called Shrapknel in 2019, when they released their first EP, Cobalt. They soon followed that up with their self-titled full-length album in 2020. Since that time, they’ve had a few setbacks, namely Curly Castro’s battle with some unexpected health issues. Even with all that going on, they never stopped writing, recording, and planning shit so that they were ready when things finally lined up again.

JSOUL is an artist from Baltimore who has been making music since the mid-2000s. Over the years, he has worked with everyone from Wordsworth to Substantial to Deborah Bond to Sy Smith, just to name a few. His last album came in 2022, when he released Levels. Now he’s back with a new project done in collaboration with D.C. vocalist B.Jamelle, Mellowdisiac. Mellowdisiac is one of the best kinds of musical surprises.

Fort Wayne emcee Sankofa has been at this hip hop thing for a minute, and despite all of the time he’s put in over the years, he is as inspired and prolific as ever. In 2022 alone, he’s already given us The Dubs I Met, Legacy Materials, and KofaSoCalfragilistic. With no signs of slowing down, he’s now reaching back to 2021 to give us BLKTCHP 2. BLKTCHP (pronounced “Black Ketchup”) was a project that came about when Sankofa paired up with producer phdbeats to deliver one of his darkest projects in a while.