Prodigy
Music For The Jilted Generation

When talking about Prodigy, many people understandably turn up their noses, thinking of that very trendy group that in 1997 topped the world charts by watering down some good musical insights in a rather crude crossover. However, it should be known that before reaching that compromised album called "The Fat Of The Land", they had already proven their skills, first in '92, with the naive yet representative "Experience", and then in '94, with their masterpiece "Music For The Jilted Generation", in which structurally rave tracks were cleverly contaminated with rock elements. Liam Howlett thus created interesting hybrids such as the legendary "Voodoo People", a pounding breakbeat strengthened by an unforgettable synthetic guitar riff, and the techno metal of "Their Law" (featuring contamination specialists Pop Will Eat Itself). Another key track was the venomous "Poison", a brilliant and wickedly genius raggamuffin-sung hip-hop bolstered by bursts of noise-industrial that even today would eat for breakfast all those fake-angry black and/or white rappers who infest the charts. Elsewhere, the tracks presented were less "contaminated" but still remarkable: the rave anthem "No Good (Start The Dance)" complete with sampled and accelerated little voice, the enveloping and pounding opener "Break & Enter", the old-style breakbeat of "Full Throttle" that seemed to come from the first album, and the acidic "One Love". Much less admirable, however, was the concluding appendix of the work subtitled "The Narcotic Suite" in which Prodigy, putting aside the techno urgency, attempted to create a sort of psychedelic music updated to the rave era: the result, however, was somewhat bombastic.

Two years later, Liam Howlett would oversimplify his style by trapping it within the song format (without knowing how to write songs) and moreover entrust the vocal parts to a dancer (who couldn't sing), but that's another story.

Listen to "Music For The Jilted Generation" and you will hear one of the most representative albums of the nineties.