33jones.com - Mobile

This week's installment of Bring Me The Remix of Zilla Rocca (part one here, part two here), an ongoing project in which Zilla Rocca's favorite producers remix tracks from his mixtape Bring Me the Head of Zilla Rocca, comes from one of my favorite producers doing it right now, Philly's Small Professor. For the third remix, S.P. has flipped Zilla Rocca's Rick Rubinesque Flow God Zilla, a track originally built around some head banging guitar samples and a scratched up vocal from Mally From the 612, into something with a far smoother edge to it. Once again I'm left amazed at how Small Pro, as with the two previously featured producers, has seamlessly remade the song (a song, it's worth noting, that was quite good to begin with) with a beat that is in an entirely different lane than the original.

That being said, I am not at all surprised that S.P.'s remix was anything less than dope. Everything I've heard from him up to this point - from his work with Philly emcee Has-Lo on the Fuck Has Day remixes to his reworking of Jay-Z on Crooklyn Gangster - has impressed me. Having recently released his first "official" instrumental album, Slowbus, on Seclusiasis Records, it seems that his career as a producer is just starting to take off.

Here's what Zilla had to say about Small Pro:

" I had read about Small Pro several times in '07-early '08 at Wake Your Daughter Up and Poisonous Paragraphs. He's from Philly, I'm from Philly, he makes beats, I make beats, he hates Papa John's pizza, as do I...it made no sense as to why I didn't have a hard drive full of his beats much earlier than this fall. He started posting on 215hiphop.com, I reached out to him, knocked out a joint over one of his "American Gangster" remix instrumentals [zshare d/l link], and we built from there. Later on, I found out his label home is Seclusiasis, which is run by one of my old college friends Starkey who I did my first group, Crooked Soul, with. Small world, right?

I picked Small Pro for "Flow God Zilla" 'cause I like his approach to remixes -- he enhances the original by playing to the artist's strengths. In other words, he won't put M.O.P. on a lean-with-it-rock-with-it track, but he won't try to out-Premier an original Premo production. "Flow God" is one of my favorite songs I've ever done production-wise, lyrically, and as a performance track. It's my theme song and a lot of people's favorite track from the mixtape, so for the remix, I wanted a totally different feel. And after hearing Small Pro's "Crooklyn Gangster" project and his new album "Slowbus," it only made sense I redeem myself for sleeping on one of my neighbors for so long. "

Zilla Rocca - Flow God Zilla (Small Pro Remix) (d/l link)

Zilla Rocca - Flow God Zilla (O.G. version produced by Zilla Rocca) (d/l link)

You can hear more from Small Pro over at his MySpace page, and in this post that we put up a few months ago. Also, be sure to cop his new instrumental album, Slowbus, which live's up to Zilla's description as being "dope as shit." You can preview and purchase it over at JunoDownload. It's been serving as the soundtrack to my cubicle life for the past few days, and I can say that it's well worth the eight bucks.

Don't forget Zilla's mixtape, Bring Me The Head of Zilla Rocca, which is still available for free! Here's a sendspace link for it.

Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site