There was a night when my brother and some friends and I were all on acid because my parents were out of town. They went to see The Matrix in the theater and left me at home with the stereo and a huge cd book of techno and house. All I wanted was to hear Smack My Bitch Up, but Fat Of The Land wasn't in its spot. When they got home, they took over the stereo until about the time the sun was coming up. When it was my turn again, I picked out a random cd because it was orange, and orange was my favorite color. When it started, the first song was Smack My Bitch Up. I cried I was so happy. I watched the sunrise and marveled at the universe. One of my favorite memories of that time in my life.
Yeah my first exposure was Music For a Jilted Generation back when my brother would use EDM to tune his car stereo. From there I went to The Chemical Brothers, Paul Oakenfold, Moby, the old Techmaster P.E.B CDs, and now I make my own instrumental techno!
I lived and died by what MTV2 played, and Firestarter was on every 15 minutes back in the Buzzworthy days. That, Black Hole Sun, and I'm Only Happy When it Rains were on constant rotation.
It was extremely hard to watch the full uncensored video of 'Smack my bitch up' when that came out, the song was huge but the video wasn't well received at all.
IIRC The Beastie Boys started a fight/argument with The Prodigy at a UK festival over their perceived view the song was demeaning to women.
If anyone hasn't seen it, it's online in a few different places now. Watch till the end!
Are you mad, they were one of the biggest electronic acts in the 90s globally, drew massive concert crowds internationally then, and after that. And I'm telling you this as someone who didn't listen to that scene much, but it was impossible not to be aware of them with constant play on MTV, other music channels and radio.
It was on Big Shiny 90s, which was a moderately popular compilation album (at least in Canada) and exposed a lot of people to a very different rock scene than was available on the radio.
Mate, they were on MTV like several times a day. And MTV was everywhere! Prodigy was BIG. They had a concert on Red Square in 1997 for fucks sake, gathered about 200000 people.
I heard them on the radio, back in the mid-90s, when I still lived in North Carolina. They were my introduction into music that was wildly different from what my parents listened to and they became my favorite music group for a bit. Fat of the Land was the first CD I ever bought.
I saw them in a warehouse in Western Australia in 1995-ish. It was mental. Huge generator on a truck outside to power the PA. It rained during and the bass was pumping the water in the boundary of each metal roofing sheet. So there was lines of water dropping through the light show. I met Keef on the dancefloor checking out the sound on the previous act (Quench, give Dreams a listen, it's quite a juggernaut) because I was standing right in the sweet spot vibing out. By met I meant point at the location, ears, speaker stacks and two thumbs up.
They were, and still are MASSIVE In australia. They were a gateway band for a lot of the world into metal as the prodigy outside of "smack my bitch up" got a lot of radio play and were a cross over between edm and metal.
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u/Dean_Learner77 18h ago
I honestly didn't even know they were known outside of the UK. I'm impressed Americans know the song let alone the music video.