Sankofa is an emcee out of Fort Wayne who keeps busy but never drops in his quality level. After a 2021 that saw him drop BLKTHCP, Floodgates, and Showkofa, he’s come right back in 2022 with a brand new full-length album, Legacy Materials. One of the great things about Sankofa’s career has been his ability to seek out and connect with lesser-known producers who have the goods when it comes to making some killer boom bap.

Jade Relics is the Vermont supergroup comprised of Elder Orange, IAME, and Rico James. The three have been in each other’s orbits for a while, but they have only recently coalesced as an official trio and started to work on music in that capacity. After teasing us with a couple of singles, we now have their debut EP, Mandarine. The beautiful thing about Mandarine is that it sounds exactly what you’d want a trio of accomplished solo musicians to sound like, because it blends all of their sounds together and then pushes the music into a new realm for all of them.

Shitao is a producer based in Paris who has been releasing music for about the last fifteen years. His most recent project, Mono, which came out last year, was a concept album that told a sci fi tale about an astronaut making an emergency landing on the planet Mono and going to explore his new surroundings. Now Shitao is back with another interesting concept album, Child’s Head With Flowers. Child’s Head With Flowers tells the tale of a brother and a sister, Medion and Raisa, who work in a mine.

Curbside Jones is an artist from Austin who has been releasing music for about the last five years. His most recent project came in April of 2021, when he paired up with Dexter Fizz to release Last Train, inspired by their tour experience in Japan. Now he’s back with a different sort of project, Jigga With the Grill. Jigga With the Grill is an interesting project in a few different ways.

Emapea is a producer from Poland who had been making music for a few years before he released his first album, Seeds, Roots & Fruits, in 2016. Most listeners in the U.S. are probably most familiar with his work because of his collaboration with L.A. emcee Kid Abstrakt for their 2020 album, Jazzy Vibes. Most recently, Emapea gave us an instrumental EP last fall called Bees, Trees, and Flowers. Now he’s back with a full-length solo album, Dreaming Zone.

bRavenous is an emcee originally from Halifax, now based in Calgary. He got started in the late ‘90s as part of the group CVG, but he’s been working as a solo artist for several years now. Just last June, we got his fifth solo album, Flaunting Imperfections. Now he’s right back with another project, Ghosts of Rockingham. Sometimes it’s useful to look back and examine where we came from and think about the people and places that shaped us, for good or for ill.

Skizza is an emcee from Saskatchewan who has been releasing music as a solo artist for about the last eight years. His most recent album came out just about a year ago, when he teamed up with AK Productions to drop Beautiful. Now he’s come right back with another full-length album, Bridge City Underdog. For Bridge City Underdog, Skizza reached out to a German producer named Yakuzy, who likes to make boom bap beats influenced by the likes of J Dilla, 9th Wonder, and Pete Rock.

Raw Poetic is a D.C. artist who initially got started in the mid-‘00s as half of the duo known as Panacea alongside K-Murdock. About five years back, he teamed up with D.C. producer Damu the Fudgemunk to release their first album together, The Reflecting Sea (Welcome to a New Philosophy). In 2020, they upped the ante when the two of them paired up with jazz legend Archie Schepp to release the album Ocean Bridges.

Sorrdes is a producer from Ipswich, UK. He started releasing music about ten years ago, first under the name Deadpoole before switching over to Sorrdes in when he released The Mountain Upholds the Sky EP in 2017. Outside of a few scattered singles, it has been four years since Sorrdes’s last proper release, Moon Kissed – EP. Now he’s back with a brand new full-length album, Looking to the Sky for Grounding.

Back in 2013, Jacksonville artists and friends Dillon and Paten Locke started a little label called Full Plate. Things were going relatively well for them over the next couple of years as they filled out the roster with artists like Batsauce and Willie Evans Jr. Then, in the summer of 2019, Paten Locke got a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer and quickly passed away that August. It was a devastating loss for the indie hip hop community, but the label pressed on in his memory.