Track Listing
1. Smack My Bitch Up
2. Breathe
3. Diesel Power
4. Funky Shit
5. Serial Thrilla
6. Mindfields
7. Narayan
8. Firestarter
9. Climbatize
10. Fuel My Fire
Review
The Prodigy are one of the more interesting electronica bands around in 1997, some of their tracks are truly infectious, and this is nowhere truer than in this album, their most famous and peppered with deserving hit singles.
Not all is rosy, however, with Prodigy comes the problem that after a while it all sounds like variations on a theme, a lot of the tracks bare enough similarities among themselves to make the album slightly boring on repeated listenings.
That being said, the album starts incredibly strong for the first three tracks and then dips a bit until Firestarter sparks it back to life (see what I did there?) only to return to two more forgettable tracks.
Track Highlights
1. Breathe
2. Smack My Bitch Up
3. Diesel Power
4. Firestarter
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
"Serial Thrilla" features a sample of a riff by Skunk Anansie, "Funky Shit" features a sample from "Root Down" from the Beastie Boys album Ill Communication, "Fuel My Fire" is a cover of an L7 song from Hungry for Stink. "Smack My Bitch Up" takes a sample from an Ultramagnetic MCs song, "Give the Drummer Some", and thus the Prodigy invited Kool Keith to do the lyrics and vocals for another track, "Diesel Power." Matt Cameron of Soundgarden and later Pearl Jam, who is falsely credited as "Mark" in the liner notes, is also understood to have contributed samples to the album, though it is not clear where.
Famous, yet hard to get and NSFW video for Smack My Bitch Up:
The Prodigy TV on MUZU.
3 comments:
You've reviewed a few of these classic Big Beat albums now, and i'm starting to see that although you appreciate and understand how popular they were and why they were popular, you're not really a fan of this music are you? I've read this blog the whole way through and i've agreed with you 99% from the start to about 1990. Recently its been really different, with you giving 8s and 7s to albums i'd happily call favourites (most of the electronic stuff), and giving 10's to albums i hate (belle and sebastian among other things). I can only assume similar things will happen as more of my favourite albums start cropping up in the late 90s, but considering the amount of albums i've rediscovered and re-evaluated in the list cause of your reviews and track highlights, i'm not really bothered in the slightest.
I still can't believe you rated Metallica higher than Bitches' Brew.
(Slayer deserves it though)
Lachlan: Yeah, it gets boring for me after a while. It's not really my style, I'd happily dance to it but I feel it is music which is tied to the context it is listened to.
Lemmy: Now that you say it like that...
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