The Prodigy - The Fat of the Land

By the summer of 1997, the anticipation was almost unbearable. Two consecutive UK number one singles in "Firestarter" and "Breathe" had turned The Prodigy from underground rave legends into genuine mainstream superstars, and a major label bidding war involving over twenty American record companies had been settled with an unprecedented deal estimated at five million dollars. When The Fat Of The Land finally arrived on June 30, 1997, it did not disappoint. It shot to number one in 22 countries simultaneously, became the fastest-selling UK dance album in Guinness World Records history with 317,000 copies sold in its first week, and debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200, making The Prodigy the first British electronic act to accomplish that feat. It has since sold over ten million copies worldwide.

The album marked the first significant vocal contributions from Keith Flint, whose snarling, Johnny Rotten-inflected delivery across "Firestarter," "Breathe," "Serial Thrilla," and a ferocious cover of L7's "Fuel My Fire" gave the record a punk energy that crossed the band over to rock audiences and festival main stages in a way no electronic act had achieved before. Liam Howlett, the sole architect of The Prodigy's sound, built the album around intense hip-hop-derived rhythms, imaginatively reconstructed samples, and a production approach described at the time as the first block-rocking post-Oasis amyl-techno-punk record. Kool Keith guests on the snarling "Diesel Power," a Beastie Boys sample fuels "Funky Sh*t," and the nine-minute "Narayan" closes proceedings with Howlett at his most expansive and inventive.

The controversies were inseparable from the record's mythology. "Firestarter"'s first BBC television performance generated the highest volume of complaints the network had ever received. "Smack My Bitch Up" was pulled from certain American retail shelves and voted by Mixmag readers as the third greatest dance record of all time in the same breath. David Bowie asked Howlett to produce music for him. Howlett turned him down.

Nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, and still considered one of the defining statements of 1990s electronic music, The Fat Of The Land is essential.