Prodigy* - The Fat Of The Land

I expect "disagree" ratings to be raining down on me, but this highly overrated album was not that good when it came out and hasn't aged well either.

The singles "Firestarter" and "Breathe" were great, as they went further into the direction The Prodigy had taken with "Poison", but the rest of the album is made up of pretty formulaic big beat / industrial sounds that can be heard on dozens of other records released around this time, most notably The Chemical Brothers' "Dig Your Own Hole". Also, the fusion of breakbeats, rock and psychedelica / world music influences that can be found on "Smack My Bitch Up" and "Narayan" had already been done way better on a number of Chemical Brothers tracks before.

The selection of samples don't do the album any good either: For a group that had just done a concept album against the criminalisation of the rave scene with "Music For The Jilted Generation", it's really disappointing to start an LP with Kool Keith talking about "smacking his bitch". There had also already been way too many techno tracks up until 1997 that had used samples from early Beastie Boys songs, as is done here on "Funky Shit".

About the choice of guest singers: I have to admit that I actually liked the music of cheesy pop-rock groups Republica and Kula Shaker back then, so I don't really have a general problem with The Prodigy inviting their lead singers for this album. The problem is though that they do a pretty half-assed job on the songs ("Fuel My Fire" and "Narayan"), and it's obvious that they were invited only so that the records company could write some big names on top of the records and market this album not only to ravers, but also to the indie rock scene.

All in all, what you get with "The Fat Of The Land" is two great singles and a handful of average big beat DJ tools, the rest is filler material.