The term “genre” is dead, its blood on the hands of artists like Girl Talk, Super Mash Bros, and Vico Ono.

And I’m ready to dance on its grave.

By fusing 80’s glam rock with modern hip hop, grunge with indie pop, and dubstep with rap, these masters of the mash-up have carefully deconstructed the barriers between genres.

Now, music is turning into a mad, 808-fueled orgy of sound.

This new art form doesn’t fit into a certain genre, and instead, does away with the idea of genres entirely.

Mash-ups have paved the way for modern musicians to truly experiment outside of their set sound, as evidenced by artists like Audiodax and Sleigh Bells.

The former fuses indie rock and raw rap to create a sound that seemingly defies classification; the latter creates an amalgamation of noise rock and dance pop formulated by a metal guitarist and an ex-girl band member.

With artists looking to expand their repertoires with new sounds and styles constantly, today’s music is no longer cut-and-dried.

Instead of waiting for their music to become the next victim of a mash-up, today’s artists have taken it upon themselves to transcend the genre barrier, by fusing R&B with hardcore rock and rapping over jazz.

Despite a lack of major label support, current mash-up artists are seeing a rise in publicity.

Girl Talk’s album “Feed the Animals,” released for free on his label Illegal Art, has garnered attention from both Rolling Stone and Blender, in addition to being named number four on Time’s Top 10 Albums of 2008.

It seems like mash-up artists are pushing the music industry in a profoundly new direction, one without the forced classification and concrete genres of the current institution.

Creating a blend of sounds that does away with all preconceived notions about modern music, mash-up artists are helping to create a melting pot of music that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.