New York's quartet of turntablists X-Ecutioners, featuring Robert "Swift" Aguilar, Anthony "Roc Raida" Williams, Keith "Total Eclipse" Bailey and Joel "Mista Sinista" Wright, marked a nostalgic return to the era of virtuoso scratching with the elaborate performances of X-Pressions (1997) and Built From Scratch (2002), an unexpected commercial success, whose tracks are sometimes composed entirely of snippets of other records (without any help from sampling machines), while Swift's solo albums, Soulful Fruit (1997) and the jazz tour de force of The Ablist (1999), were creating a new place in music for the technique. Swift then devoted himself to remixes for several musicians.

Roc Raida released the solo Crossfaders (2000).

The X-Ecutioners, pared down to the trio of Total Eclipse, Rob Swift and Roc Raida, simplified their art on Scratchology (2003), which mostly remixed their favorite hits, and on their most accessible (almost pop) effort, Revolutions (2004), featuring lots of guests.

General Patton vs The X-ecutioners (2005) is a collaboration with rock vocalist Mike Patton.

Rob Swift's political concept, Wargames (2005), displayed all the limits of the author behind the turntablist.