The Best Songs of the 2000s: #101

#101: "A Stroke of Genie-us" (2001) - Freelance Hellraiser

Now we come to just about every DJ's favorite type of music: the mashup. Also known as bastard pop, plunderphonics, glitches, xenochrony, bootlegging, bootie, and--the term I first heard to describe this type of music--the mix (or the re-mix), mashups are (usually) where DJs (and producers and composers, too) mix one record with another to form a "new" composition. Mashups have been produced for over one-hundred years now, the (argueably) first one coming from classical composer Charles Ives with his Symphony No. 2 in 1906. A few times since, (various forms of) mashups have been national (and international) hits: the Stars on 45 records, the Jive Bunny & the Mastermixers records, and the record "Pump Up the Volume" by M/A/R/R/S (the biggest single mashup hit of all time). Of course, radio-station DJs have been mashing up records since the beginning of radio stations, oftentimes taking political speeches, sampling them, and dropping them into instrumentals or either "interviewing" these politicians using reel-to-reel recorders. Club and party DJs have...well, if you've heard a club or party DJ, you've heard a mashup.

In fact, considering the number of people who've heard mashups all their lives, I'm still amazed at the number of people who still--still--get angry at the basis for most mashups: sampling. Methinks there's a bit of inherent racism that comes along with the criticism of sampling (as it helped give birth--and still is one of the building blocks--to rap and hip-hop). The standard accusation is that samplers have no creative ability, so they just steal from those who do. Malarky. Take it from someone who's tried to mashup songs and has tried to write his own: making a good mashup is much more difficult than writing an "original" song. Heck, in the world of fine arts, isn't collage a legitimate form? I thought so.

The mashup here--a combination of Christina Aguilera's vocals to "Genie in a Bottle" and the instrumental of the Strokes' "Hard to Explain"--is better than either one of those two records. The whole, this time, is greater than the sum of its parts. The production work on "Genie in a Bottle" is too generic, and Julian Casablanca's vocals on "Hard to Explain" too low-key and low in the mix (albeit deliberately). The mixture of the two, though, plays upon each record's strengths: the Strokes hard-driving (but not overpowering) muscular roll and Aguilera's vocals (and "Genie"'s vocal melody, too); it mixes perfectly pop and rock. What we have here is a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich (though the RIAA--which squelched this record from ever being sold or played on ClearChannel radio stations--hasn't stopped production of the peanut-butter & jelly sandwich...yet) for the ears.

Just like you can't buy a peanut-butter & jelly sandwich in the grocery stores, you can't find this one in Wal-Mart or on iTunes. You gotta go home, sit in front of the counter, and find the mix yourself. You don't have to make it, though, as Freelance Hellraiser (British DJ Roy Kerr) has already made it for you. You just have to get up and go get it. As with the sandwich, the result is well-worth the effort. Let's pump up the volume.