Mash Out Posse: William Burkowitz, Laze E. Laze (vocals); Ill Will Fulton (guitar, sampler, background vocals); Larry Devore (guitar, background vocals); Kareem Lamar (bass instrument); Sean Cameron (drums); Rocklogic (programming, background vocals); Fizzy Womack, Nando Redrum, Anthony Realbuto.

Personnel: Rocklogic (vocals, drum programming); Foxx, Fizzy Womack (vocals); Nando Redrum (guitar); Anthony Realbuto (drums).

Audio Mixer: Rocklogic.

Photographer: Kaysh Shinn.

Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson recently told a publication that "history is the one thing that hip-hop audiences have utter contempt for." Mash Out Posse are clearly counting on this sentiment to hold true, lest some MTV shorties call them out for biting Ice-T's steez … la Body Count. Heck, most of these kids probably won't even remember Limp Bizkit's melding of metal and rap, which puts MOP in a pretty strong position with these hard rock reworkings of classic tracks and some originals that don't do much lyrically past Lil' Fame and Billy Danzenie's well-established tough-guy party boasts and whose riffs barely cross into the '90s, let alone the current millennium. And it goes from ill-advised to pure catastrophe on "Fire," which climbs to the heights of metal ridicule with a falsetto chorus and sick-cat screeches by the supposed "street poets" at work here. At least the Posse are stand-up enough to subtitle "Hilltop Flava" "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn," which is where the song parrots its riff and chorus. But rappers paying tribute to rappers who paid tribute to metal is just too convoluted to be considered the next step after Run-D.M.C. did Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." Especially in this post-Puffy "why even bother to write your own song when there were so many in the '80s to bite" world. ~ Joshua Glazer

Rolling Stone (p.179) - 3 stars out of 5 - "M.O.P. remake their barn-storming boom-bap anthems as thrash rock. If any rap group can get away with this, it's these guys..."

Q (p.120) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Most of the time it's a riot, with Lil' Fame and Billy Dance cutting through the racket with an assured swagger."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 - "MASH OUT POSSE is reworkings of their finest moments with a nu metal backing band."