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Following the success of this past summer's Feed the Beast freestyles - which, other than the curiously controversial Jim Jones review, continues to be the most popular feature on this site - Beat Garden has blessed us once again with another ongoing series of releases that we'll be featuring over the next few weeks. This time around, the focus of attention is Zilla Rocca's mixtape Bring Me the Head of Zilla Rocca, a mixtape that should have attained 5-star status in your iPod by now. Over the course of the next few weeks we'll be putting up remixes of songs from the mixtape, with the idea being that each installment will serve as a spotlight for some of Zilla's favorite producers. Most of the producers involved - including Griff, Mydus and Small Pro - have had their work featured on here at some point in the past, but the first entry comes from someone we haven't had a chance to profile yet: Southwest Philly DJ/Producer/MC Nex Millen.

Originally starting out as the DJ for Camden group Da Nuthouse, a group signed to Bobbito Garcia's Fondle 'Em label (and whose 2000 EP Deez Nuts is well worth the crate digging required to find a copy), Nex Millen has spent the past few years producing for various artists, working as one of the Music Supervisors for the And1 Mixtapes and continuing to spin records at various spots around Philly. He's the co-founder of an organization and record label called Respect the Culture which, as the name might indicate, is devoted to putting out music that's closer to boom bap than vocoder rap. Having listened to the work that he put in as producer of Poesh Wonder's No You Haven't And You Never Will Again, there's no question Nex can hook a beat up, but what I really appreciate about his sound is the fact that he incorporates turntables into his work, making use of scratches in a way that I haven't really heard since DJ Premier. If you've listened to Bring Me the Head of Zilla Rocca then you should be well familiar with Nex Millen, as his scratches are featured throughout (he also produced the track Cup Runneth).

I asked Zilla to share his own thoughts on Nex, and here's what he had to say:

"I reached out to Nex for this remix 'cause when I did the original 'Proper' (produced by Alex Wood of Beat Garden), I didn't think the song became an 'actual song' until I reached out to Millen for cuts during the mixdown period. Plus, we had a chance to rehearse my set and perform the song live last month for my mixtape release party, and he really blew me away with how thorough and precise he was overall as a DJ. In short, I didn't love the original 'Proper' until Nex Millen added his touch to it.

I figured he'd be a great dude for this remix because his record collection is ridiculous, he makes great music for himself and his artist Poesh Wonder, and I've known him for about 6-7 years and never got a beat from him. It felt long overdue to work with one of the dopest cats in Philly/NJ and beyond."

Nex has remixed the mixtape's opening track Proper, a song that includes one of my favorite lines from the tape, "These cats turn Dracula, try to duck our shine." Peep:

Zilla Rocca featuring Nex Millen - Proper (Street Sk8r Remix)

Nex also passed along the instrumental for the remix, so if any emcee out there wants to drop a verse of their own over this beat, have at it. If it's good enough to impress Mr. Rocca, you might find yourself featured on the next Beat Garden project.

Nex Millen - Proper (Street Sk8r Remix) Instrumental

And finally, here's the album version of Proper, for the sake of comparison:

Zilla Rocca - Proper (O.G. version)

To hear more from Nex Millen, stop by his MySpace page. For even more songs, including some of the work that he's done with Camden emcee Poesh Wonder, check out his website, respecttheculture.com.

And if for some reason you still haven't downloaded Bring Me the Head of Zilla Rocca, here's a sendspace link. Go get it.

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