Zilla Rocca & The Shadow Boxers Unveil Marvel-ous "Noir-Hop" Anything I Touch, I Bruise Vol. 2: The Superior Foes of Zilla Rocca (Remix Comp.)
"Grab my remixes of every dope-a** rapper I've met in the past eight years at threedollarpistol.com... I remix songs for the challenge; to outdo the original or make something new out of the established piece of art," @ZillaRocca wrote on his rather lively Twitter page upon the release of his latest, and might I add, wonderfully-titled, Anything I Touch, I Bruise Vol. 2: The Superior Foes of Zilla Rocca. However, oddly enough, I first stumbled upon Rocca about two weeks ago, whilst searching for a little background information concerning one of my all-time favorite Hip-Hop albums, Mos Def & Black Jack Johnson's genre-rattling The New Danger (2004). I eventually unearthed a March 2015 ZILLA-penned Passion of The Weiss piece titled, Rework The Angles: Mos Def The New Danger; "The New Danger was dark, scattered, and bizarre. It was also 75 minutes long [and showcases] Mos Def The Soulful Vocalist was mashed next to Mos Def The Pantera Enthusiast next to Mos Def The Under-rated Street Philosopher" is an example of one of Zilla Rocca's perfectly passionate, insightful, and painfully honest New Danger critiques and thoughtful partial tracklist re-arrangement. Rocca is a "bottle breaker, corner store crusher, dime store detective, pulp fiction sage, comic book kingpin, Noir-Hop creator" by his own submission. @zillarocca's Facebook page lists his greatest personal and stylistic influences as "Ghostface [Killah], Camp-Lo, Tom Waits, Aesop Rock, André 3000, cLOUDDEAD, Halfcast, John Lennon, El-P, David Axelrod, David Lynch, Raymond Chandler, Ed Brubaker, Raekwon, Roc Marciano, Mos Def, Dashiell Hammett, [and] Megan Abbot."
Zilla Rocca's latest remix compilation, Anything I Touch, I Bruise Vol. 2: The Superior Foes of Zilla Rocca, and his third since his last proper Noir-Hop album—No Vacation for Murder was unleashed on the Noir-Hop originator's own Three Dollar Pistol Bandcamp page last week, wherein "all rappers appear courtesy of friendship, good booze, and mutual respect." Anything I Touch, I Bruise Vol. 2 plays out like a 1990's Wu-Tang Clan-esque Mafioso Rap album, or better yet, "Noir-Hop," assisted by notorious rhyming goons like Guilty Simpson, Small Professor, Mega-Ran, Red Pill, former Wrecking Crew partners-in-crime Curly Castro & PremRock, and a couple of Zilla Rocca & The Shadow Boxers' own No Vacation for Murder (2015) compositions. The Shadow Boxers are, by Zilla's own submission, "a revolving collective" of characters and long-time fiends including (but not limited to) producer Blurry Drones, Has-Lo, Floodwatch, Decon emcee Roc Marciano, Curly Castro, and Geechi Suede of Camp-Lo fame; "this stuff is forged in the violent South Philly crime scene..." Not withstanding, or maybe because of, his burgeoning career as a rapper-producer, Zilla Rocca has recently penned a handful of incredibly well-written Retrospective and Rework The Angles think-pieces for Passion of The Weiss centered around Common, Nas, Jay Z, "Respek"ing Fat Joe, Lushlife, Sean Price, his aforementioned Mos Def piece, and countless others. Zilla Rocca recently informed me via email that he's currently "sitting on two [completed] full-length rap albums," which he says will tentatively drop this upcoming fall/winter season.
