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The liner notes describe it directly: five tracks meant to be played in the streets of New York and the Netherlands alike. Jam Young, a Queens MC whose flow is built on the kind of melodic hook construction and bar-to-bar variation that made late 1990s and early 2000s East Coast rap replayable, brings exactly that energy to Skinny Bonez Tha Godfatha's production — hard-hitting drums paying deliberate homage to the golden era without simply copying it. Skinny Bonez, the Dutch producer and founder of Voodoo Docterz who has built a discography of cross-Atlantic collaborations with Queens veterans including 40-40, brings a production sensibility that is European in precision and American in feel. Features from Britt of the Netherlands and Lex Rush from Queens provide contrast. Cutsupreme handles the scratches. The title references the polo shirt as cultural signifier — Queens hip-hop iconography, specifically — which means the album knows exactly who it's talking to.
Video Tape Club is the kind of producer album that defies the usual taxonomy of the format. Chong Wizard — Vancouver-based executive producer whose label history runs from mid-2000s mixtape DJing through the Infinity Stone EP series to curator of rare underground pairings — has assembled ten tracks with twenty-three vocal performers and managed to keep the whole project coherent. That is a genuinely difficult thing to do. The features span generations and aesthetics: Tha God Fahim, Denmark Vessey, MidaZ The BEAST, Estee Nack, Open Mike Eagle, Lungs and Phiik, Nolan The Ninja, .tetsuo and Doseone together on a single track, Myka 9, Michael Christmas, AJ Suede, Milc, Brother Tom SOS, Lord Juco, ICECOLDBISHOP, Chris Crack, E L U C I D, sleepingdogs. Mixed and mastered by Ro Data. Guitar on "Snake In The Eagle's Shadow" by Scotty Metz; violin and viola by Katie Jacoby; bass by Adi Bop on tracks 9 and 10. Artwork by Paul Rentler. Due June 19th, physical editions incoming. The conceptual anchor — cult VHS tapes passed between people who cared about them — gives the album its emotional logic: these are artists you have to be in the right place to find, and finding them together on one record is the whole point.
The Custodian of Records strips album presentation to its functional minimum: thirteen tracks numbered ONE through THIRTEEN, released today with no further explanation required. The New Jersey producer's catalog rewards close listening — his work with Sleep Sinatra on the Sources of Nature LP (Loretta Records vinyl) and releases through Chopped Herring Records have established him as someone who approaches sample-based production with genuine archival knowledge and restraint. "Adult Blends" as a title implies exactly what it delivers: mature, complex blend work that doesn't announce itself. For crate diggers and producers who understand what the blend format demands technically, this is the kind of release that surfaces on best-of lists months after it drops. Quiet, precise, and operating entirely on its own terms.
Midnight Over Caledonia is a compact album — six tracks with the shortest under a minute and a half — built entirely on BeatMasterBoyce production and delivered by Barz Fury with the kind of focused urgency that comes from working within deliberate constraints. Scotland sits as a largely underdocumented node in the UK underground hip-hop geography, and releases like this function as reminders that the scene extends well beyond London and Bristol. Features from Spawn Zero on "Giant Steps" and JCliff on "Boulder Strikes" provide variation without disrupting the album's atmospheric continuity. BeatMasterBoyce's production is dark, grounded, and unbothered by trends — qualities that suit Barz Fury's delivery without calling attention to them. The title earns its Caledonian reference without romanticizing it.
Assa describes this nine-track collection simply and accurately: a gathering of tracks he featured on between 2009 and 2013, pulled from other artists' projects across the UK underground. The roster — Chris Leese, Deadline, Spider Jaroo, Sleaze, Pro P, Bobby Esmund — reads like a cross-section of the regional British hip-hop circuit during a period when UK underground was operating with significant creative energy but minimal mainstream attention. Assa's feature appearances on those projects reveal an MC who was considered a strong enough lyricist to be worth calling across multiple scenes and settings. Dr. Syntax, Antidote, and Bonez among the names on the credits. The acknowledgment in the liner notes — "massive thank you to all the artists that gave me the opportunity" — lands without sentimentality. This is an MC accounting for his own history honestly.
Wish Master has been a consistent and underappreciated presence in the UK underground for over a decade, operating independently through his own O.R Records imprint out of Bristol's St. Pauls neighborhood — the same area that gave rise to trip-hop through the Wild Bunch collective in the 1980s. His previous project No CPR, released through Tricky's False Idols label, showed he could operate at that level of quality without compromising the rugged, cinematic hip-hop foundation he's built his name on. Da Business arrives ten tracks deep with features from Bristol scene veterans Datkid and Matey Boy on tracks 4 and 5. Production from Dumb Logic anchors the sound in moody, dusty boom bap that rewards close attention. This is the sound of a craftsman who knows exactly what he's doing and has no interest in explaining it to the wrong audience.
For those deep in the Killa Beez extended universe, the collaboration between Solomon Childs and Shaka Amazulu The 7th requires no introduction — the two have been building together across multiple projects from Retrophin remixes to the broader School of the Gifted infrastructure. Super-7: Issue #1 gives that partnership its own conceptual frame: a comic-book curriculum in which Solomon enters as a gifted student and exits as a fully activated figure, with Shaka serving as architect, producer, professor, and beat-blackboard simultaneously. Every track is a lesson, every verse an exam. Production conceived, arranged, mixed, and mastered entirely by Shaka at Classroom Z'Nox in London with the kind of single-vision cohesion that rare in multi-artist projects. Features from Rubbabandz and Napoleon (School of the Gifted). Scheduled for August, physical edition incoming.
Two tracks, zero filler. Boogz Davinchi, a Vitry-sur-Seine MC whose catalog is built on deliberate darkness and a surgical approach to bars, links with RC Beatmakus — founding member of Légitime Processus and one of the more consistent beat architects in the Paris underground over the last two decades. The title says it all. Série Noir is French crime fiction, the pulp imprint that gave the world hard-boiled nihilism in cheap paperback covers — and Boogz wears that aesthetic without irony. RC's MPC work here keeps the palette appropriately bleak: dusty loops, muted tones, minimal embellishment. Short, concentrated, and uninterested in impressing anyone who isn't already listening closely.
