The Best Bootlegs in the World Ever
Of course, obtaining the rights to chart-topping songs is prohibitively expensive, which is one reason you may never have heard a mashup: most of them are illegal. You’d think Aguilera would welcome the kind of hip validation a duet with the Strokes would bring, but her management put the kibosh on “A Stroke of Genius” just as it was starting to take off in England. Island Records has released a legal mashup, but there are hundreds of illicit ones floating around, posted on the Internet or issued as white-label 12-inches that disappear in a few weeks. The Best Bootlegs in the World Ever is becoming increasingly hard to find, but it’s worth the effort: almost every track outruns its source material by a mile.
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News stories about mashups often start with a riddle (“What do you get when you cross Nirvana with Destiny’s Child?”), and in fact it’s hard to describe a mashup without making it sound goofy. On Best Bootlegs, Missy Elliott is backed by the Cure, Salt-N-Pepa by the Stooges, and Chuck D by the Tijuana Brass. You might think that after the initial shock of hearing Destiny’s Child sing “Bootylicious” over the power chords of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” you’d never have reason to listen again. But once you get past the novelty of Freelance Hellraiser’s “Smells Like Booty,” the song’s allure begins to deepen. On track after track the original recordings fit together so seamlessly that you might wonder how they ever existed apart from each other. Jacknife Lee’s “Get Your 9lb Cock On” finds Missy Elliott fronting the obscure Irish punks Compulsion as if they’ve been rehearsing together for months. On Soulwax’s “Push It/No Fun” the Stooges’ guitars lean so hard on Salt-N-Pepa’s vocals you could almost believe it was recorded live. The track is unnervingly sexy–and more than a little scary.
Much like 70s punk, mashups function not only as rock music but also as rock theory, critiquing by example today’s stifled and obvious musical landscape. There’s a lot going on here, and most of it is liberating. Rap needn’t be set to predictable funk beats, R & B ballads needn’t come wrapped in lace, and garage melodies needn’t recycle the Ramones. Tracks like “A Stroke of Genius” or McSleazy’s “Don’t Call Me Blur” (Madison Avenue’s “Don’t Call Me Baby” set to Blur’s “Song 2”) show how much more bands like the Hives or the Strokes could be doing–particularly if they didn’t turn a deaf ear to black music. The cross-pollination of black and white sounds has defined American pop, but in today’s indie-rock scene, funk (or its first cousin, rap) is about the only trace of R & B you’re likely to hear.
