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All this scratching is making me itch, but I'm itching so much I must be allergic. The men once known as the X-Men may be the most dexterously-digited, disc-jockeying, dick-clutching, beat-juggling scratch-music cats the documentary-endorsed world has ever drawn together, but that don't mean much when the end result is only a compact disc of flat-mat hip-hop as uninspiring as this. The X-Ecutioners' big-label, big-dollar, primed-for-crossover Built From Scratch record is a manful, functional, mono-leveled entry into a discerning world, gearing up to try for a rise in popularity. Thus it finds the X-Men happily buying into the need for obligatory bullshit dude-ins with dipshits like Everlast and two knobs from Linkin Park (yeah, I shit you not), such selling-centric modes mixing it with itchy-trigger-fingered exercises in masturbatory scratch-tastic cutting up and cutting out. In the midst of this, the mere listener fears carpal tunnel from just listening to such exercises in form-over-function show-off-ism. Watching all this shit go down live would undoubtably be fun for the whole family, but even saying that just lends credence to the inescapable thought that DJ battles are just the new-kids' equivalent of dueling guitar solos — Roc Raida's just Steve Vai here to teach your Ralph Macchio ass a lesson — and that, just like an album of guitar solos, an album of battling fancy-fingered trick-pony turntablism is an utterly artless endeavor.
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