The Uncanny X-ecutioners

The X-Men are a team of fictitious comic book mutants who use their super powers to battle super villains. The X-ecutioners are a team of Brooklyn DJs who recently released Built From Scratch on Sony Records. The similarities? More than you might think. Cyclops and Wolverine can be found battling Magneto. Mista Sinista, Rob Swift, Total Eclipse, and Roc Raida battle other ill Djs in the ruthless East Side scene. Built From Scratch’s track listing is twenty-one cuts of hip-hop war credentials wherein the abreviation “Feat.” is used more than liberally. The album is a who’s who of Old School rappers and recent rap-core ass kickers (see: Linkin Park contributing on “It’s Going Down”) coupled with a ghetto smorgusborg of eclectic sampling, and blanketed with the kind of intelligently obscene lyrics that earn the album both its parental advisory label and potentially a BFA in creative writing. The wordsmithing is clever, if, perhaps a few “mutha fucka’s” short of Poet Lauriate material. So while comic book fans might pass up the X-Ecutioners and stick it out with the group’s mutant counterparts, rap fans might want to give Built From Scratch a shot, before it shoots them.