There are certain things that shouldn’t go together: socks and sandals, Bacardi and Percocet, anyone’s dad and a “We Be Jammin’” t-shirt. Of course, just because some things shouldn’t be together doesn’t mean that they won’t end up together. The above examples should serve as a sobering reminder. Then there are things that don’t always end up together that perhaps wouldn’t be so bad in tandem: swimming and the rain, bologna and raisin bread (I’m serious; try it), Madonna and the Sex Pistols. The final instance is a realization that many DJ’s have had as of late and it has lead to a new musical genre: the mash-up.

The notion of combining the works of two different artists is no new invention. Most hip hop and rap songs looking for the extra chart edge include a familiar hook or bass line from a well known song, a practice known as “sampling.” The combination has traditionally been between an original piece by the artist combined with a previously released item; Puffy’s tribute to Biggie Smalls took Sting’s basic framework and included a new beat and new lyrics while Ludacris’ “Number One Spot” borrows only a few moments of the Austin Powers’ theme and places it on a loop. On the other hand, mash-ups provide none of their own original tracks, working only with what is available within the combined songs.

The most typical method of the mash-up is to take the vocals of one song and the music from another. Thus, the vocals from Madonna’s “Ray of Light” sit atop the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant” and “God Save the Queen.” It is a process that sounds much easier than it actually is but, with some time, the right computer program and a bit of aural skill, people all over the world, primarily in the United States and England, are mixing and matching songs in allsorts of ways

The most inventive mash-up project to date is still Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, a combination of the vocals from Jay-Z’s Black Album and a heavily mixed version of music from The Beatles’ White Album. Not only does it blend the two albums well, it cuts across genres and conjoins two figureheads of respective sounds. It is this type of mash-up that is most exciting because, rather than combining artists who could be seemingly interchangeable, such as Barry White and Marvin Gaye, Danger Mouse creates a new product out of two properties that sit at nearly opposite ends of the spectrum.

As happens with all new forms of art on the rise, the mash-up scene is peppered with pretenders. Months after the internet release of The Grey Album, the web was full of Jay-Z mash-up albums, poorly mixing The Black Album with hokey choices like Weezer’s Blue Album and Metallica’s own Black Album. Because it is such a novel genre, it runs the risk of becoming a novelty.

Other issues face the mash-up genre aside from impoverished practitioners. With club and radio demand for a mash-up of a new single soon after release, the quality of work can be debased. Thus, some of the best mash-ups come from combinations of artists with established catalogues: Missy Elliot and Joy Division, TLC and The Cure, Devo and Destiny’s Child. The other unavoidable concern is that the genre may only build from pre-existing pieces; it is the remora to the music industry’s great white.

During her visit early in the semester, performance artist Meredith Monk told the audience of her lecture to be original above all else. In a generation that places less priority on originality and more interest in replication, the musical Frankenstein that is the mash-up has come to embrace our current outlook, if for no other reason than to find out what it would sound like if Nelly joined Lynyrd Skynyrd. Creativity Lite.