Music @lemmy.world

6d ago

What are your thoughts on “The fat of the land” by Prodigy ?

80 comments

It's a classic. Back to back bangers. Even some of the more "out there" songs like Narayan. Though there's barely any albums I don't like from them. Maybe "Experience" because it's a little much sometimes. Quite partial to "Invaders Must Die" and "No Tourists" since I grew up with IMD and because NT is their last album before Keith died (RIP)
- Invaders Must Die is so good but Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned is another good one, mainly because of Juliette Lewis.
  
  Oh yea lots of bangers on there too. Spitfire, Girls and You'll Be Under My Wheels are my faves

It sounds modern, mainly because modern electronic music was so heavily affected by Prodigy

Coooommmmmeee plaaaay myyyy game
- I can hear this comment

Fantastic album, like others have said, it was on heavy rotation in my teens, sounds track to many late night game sessions.
"Smack my Bitch Up" being a hugely popular and influential song, is also part of a long running lost media hunt for me. In the late 00's there was a youtube video made by a 3d animator as a demo reel. It was an extended anime fight between a yellow and black sentai/robot and a bunch of other robots. SMBU was the soundtrack to the video of course, lots of bits were synced to it.
That was back in the glorious pre-copyright-bot times, and since it was a demo for an unreleased project using a hugely popular song by someone who's name I've long forgotten, I can't find it! Probably scrubbed off the net by now, the creator moved on to being a cog in the Marvel movie machine.

There is not a single bad track on this entire album. Every track rocks.

Certified iridium banger for a reason, without question. My favorite track, voodoo people (pendulum mix) isn’t on this, but I still sing the chant from Narayan. Just as influential as most of the early works of Fatboy Slim, the Chemical Brothers, the Bassbin Twins, the Crystal Method, Fluke, and so many others. The remix album of this is still just as devastating.
Once you heard pretty much any one of these tracks, you knew this was, and probably always would be, the sound for you.

OH MY GOD THATS THE FUNKY SHIT!
- Dabadabadabadabadabadabadabad

I went through a big prodigy phase in my teens (still listen often). I once had the house to myself so I loaded up the backyard surround sound system (living with some rich friends at the time, we did not have backyard surround sound money) with 6 CDs of prodigy. Got really stoned and then floated around in the pool with their small dog on my lap for hours. Probably one of the best single days of my life. Just pure glorious relaxation. Leisure on a level I have been chasing for the rest of my life lol.

Great album, one of my favourites.
Where I'm from Narayan was a summer hit in the dance clubs when it came out, although my friends and I were more into Firestarter and Breathe. I venture saying that it helped bridge punk and dance in a big way.

I've never heard of this but that album art goes so hard, now I have to listen to it
- Your lucky day.
- you have to come back and tell us what your take is
  
  Okay, back! This album puts me right back into "PS1 game soundtrack nostalgia" and I love it.Its's a great album to get hype to. Definitely added to my rotation.
  
  Downloading now, I will return with hot takes 😎
- The music in it goes harder than the cover art!
- Oh my I envy you

Great album, I slightly prefer invaders must die over it but i'd put it on par with music for the jilted generation for different reasons though (like both complement each other I'd say)

Controversial opinion: It’s the album that ruined Prodigy.
Experience and Jilted Generation are amazing and I love every track.
Their first two albums were everything I loved about the genre. As soon as Smack My Bitch Up started getting radio play, they shifted their sound to match and never looked back.
- I can appreciate their later stuff but I agree that the first two albums are better. You might say they are rougher and under produced but they captured the sound of underground at the time. You look back at a lot of the early music that came out of the rave scene and it's almost naive in its production but will always be special to me.
- I get exactly what you're saying here. I feel the same way about pearl jam after they started working with Neil Young. Their sound changed and never went back to their harder rock roots.
  
  I never made the Neil Young connection, but I absolutely stopped listening to Pearl Jam. The last album I enjoyed was Vitalogy, which lines up with them doing Mirror Ball with Neil Young before their No Code album.
- I can see that. I came to the thread thinking that this album is great but the downside is that it got so big and influential that it overshadowed the first two albums, which is a shame because they are very different than Fat of the Land but still so good. Experience and Music for the Jilted Generation deserve more attention. Hackers is such a formative movie for me and a big part of it is it's soundtrack and prodigy is a big part of it.
  For me it would be "ruined" in quotes, I don't blame them for changing their style, musicians change and want to do something different, just sad that there is no more old prodigy.
  But I have to make a disclaimer, I didn't listen to anything after The Fat of the Land, so my knowledge is limited. (The reason is because I got introduced to prodigy at the time of the first 3 albums but didn't follow up on them, but that is normal for me, never follow up on bands)
  
  I considered writing “the album that ruined Prodigy for me” but decided to stick with the more inflammatory version. 🤣
- Funny you say that, I always felt like the previous two albums felt kind of empty, almost as if the production wasn’t finished. I felt like that at the time it came out too, and there were better, more “complete” contemporary works in the genre (although hardly any had airplay at the time).
  This had a new energy and felt every bit the polished album that they were due. Then the radio stations played it to death.
  
  One man’s polished is another man’s over-produced.
  Clearly the sound of this album resonated more with the mainstream, but I always felt like the addition of so much distortion, both to the sampling and to the synth, started to get away from what I liked about the genre. The pure waves of the digital instruments are why I liked techno. I had analog genres of music if I wanted to listen to something dirty sounding.

I still listen to this at least weekly, the album is in my regular gym rotation because
A) it's hard for me to listen to lyric heavy music and count reps correctly (brain no work good during ugga dugga) and
B) It's amazing.

Good album, so many great tracks.

Used to have it on loop while playing doom/quake
- Same but it was Duke Nukem 3D for us!
  
  Don't forget the Megadeth duke track. Gotta have that in rotation too.
- Descent for me. This or some kmfdm.

Awesome album

The soundtrack of my youth. Genious.

its a total banger

This had their "hits"/pop vibe. Invaders must die I think a better album, their real sound. But this is 10 years before, and really the same revolutionary sound/music. Was a big shift from their earlier "Everybody in the place" technohouse.

Legendary

Wait, that's not Crab Rave?

Prefer jilted generation but this has some great tunes on it.

It was both trendy in terms of sound and packaging/styling, but the whole album was mixed with such mastery that it was one of the best sounding package I've heard until perhaps the mid 2010s. That on its own is incredible, especially in a technologically driven genre.

One of their top three albums, possibly the best and most cohesive.

Essentially Public Enemy for apolitical pillheads.
- Hey I'm not apolitical
  
  What's in your stash?

One of the greatest albums of all time!

I enjoy it

Great music and a innovative piece of history that set us on the course to crab rave.

It makes me nostalgic because it was one of the first CDs I owned.
The first was Jock Jams Volume 2, if you were wondering
- If you continued to follow that trajectory you probably have the best album ever made by now.
  
  The last album I bought was Bricknasty - XONGS which I very much enjoy
- Ha! Very funny that you mention Jock Jams Volume 2.
  When my wife was in labor with our first daughter, and it came time to push, the album she wanted to listen to was Jock Jams Volume 1.
  We just had our second daughter yesterday, we are still in the Maternity ward. Guess what album we listened to during the pushing part of labor? That's right...
  Jock Jams Volume 2.
  
  Fantastic choices. Volume 3 has some good tracks but pales in comparison
- This might have been my first CD that was bought just for me. 311 would have been another one. I'm very nostalgic because I loved it as a young teenager. It still holds up, too.

Great album. Bought my copy a long time ago. It's the kind of music I sometimes go for when, of all things, cooking.
Great beats, strong lyrics, a well balanced album overall.

Up there with Dummy and Different Class in the triumvirate of British 90s music.

One of the best.
Edit: in fact I'm going to listen to it right now.

fucking awesome.

I have it on vinyl and it's so good. One of a kind. Iconic in so many ways. Shame about Keith Flint, hopefully he rests in peace
- Oh man, it would be nice to have this on vinyl.

Back when Quake came out and Team Fortress Classic as well you could remove the game CD and put in a music CD of your choice for an alternative soundtrack, and this was my go to. Flippin' astrology, rocket jump with Prodigy. Diesel Power is still on my workout playlist.

Is pretty good

Fantastic album

I got the poison

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cE0wfjsybIQ

Thoughts of how I was gullible enough to fall for the Columbia House scheme.
Great album though.
- Lol you're supposed to cancel after your 15 cd's for $1, bro

I have the album on my phone and it's in my regular rotation still.
20 years or so ago it used to be my "drive to work" album to really get my day going, for some reason I remember Diesel Power always coming on when I was on this one stretch of road and for some reason I couldn't tell you it just fit perfectly with that part of the drive.

Plugging this making-of smbu:
https://youtu.be/eU5Dn-WaElI
- Thank you! This is awesome!
  I never knew they sampled RATM.
  I was young when this came out and had no idea it was built from samples until many years later.

I've never heard of this before and I have not listened to it but I just really like crabs so I bet it's a good one
- You owe it to yourself to listen to that album ASAP
  
  I took your advice and can confirm that it is in fact a good one 🦀🦀🦀

80 comments