Movies like Hackers and even Fight Club indulged in a sexy-apocalyptic romanticism because that’s exactly what the 1990s were all about: indulgence. (The line is a sample from an old Ultramagnetic MCs song.) Was The Prodigy a genuine menace? Or were Flint and Co. With songs like “Smack My Bitch Up,” The Prodigy seemed to be evangelizing for misogynistic violence and heroin at the same time. Like Marilyn Manson and “gangsta rap,” The Prodigy came to symbolize a kind of civilizational threat. Īwash with fears about the end of the millennium, ’ 90s American culture cast “edgy” musical acts as harbingers of end times. Electronic music seemed to contain seeds of destruction, a sense that once the machines take over for good, the only culture left will be at the blood raves. The common denominator between apocalypse-fears and electronic music is, perhaps, the vague idea of a nerd behind a computer, subverting a helplessly analogue society with his alienated disco tunes. Critics were connecting The Prodigy to the dark vision of the future also apparent in ’90s movies like The Matrix, Hackers, and XistenZ. The Times was describing the vibe in the “Firestarter” video-an apocalyptic, sexy griminess. The lyrics to “Firestarter” go: “I’m the bitch you hated, filth infatuated, yeahhhh.” But the American vision of The Prodigy as DJs of darkness was basically born of a culture that had no idea what darkness was actually coming. You can read about it in a 1998 New York Times review of a Prodigy show, in which Howlett is described as a leader of “folk devils” and the band’s sound as “the dark side of the machine-fueled utopia embraced by electronic music: its violence, its connections to crime and war.” You saw it on MTV2 and read about it in Chuck Palahniuk novels. The real life “party scene,” as Flint told Spin, was about “breaking into warehouses, setting up a sound system, cars parked across everything, riot police showing up with dogs, armor, surrounding the building, waiting for their warrant.” In late 1990s America, however, The Prodigy was a cultural touchstone for a weird obsession with an Armageddon-type event that had something to do with the internet. But the real change was the way that The Prodigy was received in America. By that time Flint had gotten a makeover, shaving off part of his hair and generally acting like a bit of a psychopath. The Earthbound records went on to form part of The Prodigy’s second album, Music for the Jilted Generation, but it was only with Fat of the Land that the band truly became huge. (Members would leave and join as the years wore on.) The band got popular so quickly that Howlett had to prove he hadn’t sold out by anonymously releasing two stonking records, the delicious “ Earthbound 1 ” and “Earthbound 2.” DJs sniffed when they found out that Howlett of “Charly” fame had cut the records, but they safeguarded his reputation. They added MC Maxim and a singer named Sharky, and The Prodigy was born. The pair were also friends with Leeroy Thornhill, a dancer like Flint, adept at a beautifully old-school shuffle. Flint asked him for a mixtape, which he returned along with a few of his own songs. Britain’s rave scene was an all-ages affair, with day-glo clothes everywhere, smiley faces, and pacifiers for the gurners.įlint had met Howlett at a rave in 1989. Back then, The Prodigy was sometimes derided as “kiddie-techno,” because of their juvenile samples and because the teens loved them. The song sampled an informational broadcast instructing listeners to “always tell your mummy before you go off somewhere” over a neat little breakbeat and some noises like lasers gone haywire, in between meows from a cartoon cat. The Prodigy had been famous in Britain since 1991, when their debut song “Charly” flooded dance floors across the nation. The story of how The Prodigy came to symbolize a kind of techno-dystopian darkness says as much about the late 1990s as the band itself. People seemed to “think it’s about the internet, the future, technology, play stations -and it isn’t!” he said. In a Spin magazine cover story, Flint, who died this week at the age of 49, described his bafflement at the way British rave culture was being translated for Americans. With its third album, The Fat of the Land, led by the massive singles “Firestarter” and “Breathe,” The Prodigy became the first of the 1990s British dance acts to cross the Atlantic. After a long youth dancing in English rural barns (literally-his local club in Essex was called The Barn), the band he sang for was breaking America.
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