Fatboy Slim

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Fatboy Slim is the artist alias of Norman Cook, an English musician and DJ who was born Quentin Cook in Bromley in 1963. He began in punk, played bass with the Housemartins in the 1980s and in 1986 had a British number one with Caravan of Love. After the end of that band he moved to Brighton to make dance music. There he formed Beats International, with the number one Dub Be Good to Me in 1990, and later Freak Power.

Music and breakthrough

Cook adopted the name Fatboy Slim in 1995. In Brighton he started the club night Big Beat Boutique, where he mixed breakbeats with northern soul, acid house, hip hop and reggae. The big beat genre takes its name from that night. His first album Better Living Through Chemistry appeared in 1996. The second, You've Come a Long Way, Baby from 1998, contained The Rockafeller Skank, Praise You and Right Here, Right Now. Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars followed in 2000.

Influence

The music leans heavily on samples from all kinds of genres, combined with pop structures, processed rhythms and short, slogan-like vocals. Fatboy Slim showed that a DJ with a sampler and a solid beat could conquer the charts, and made the DJ a pop star on festival stages. In this way he belongs to the wave of DJs who brought dance to a large audience in the 1990s.

Listening

• 
  The Rockafeller Skank · Fatboy Slim, 1998
  Apple Music ↗

Discography

Studio albums

• 1996Better Living Through Chemistry
• 1998You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
• 2000Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars
• 2004Palookaville
• 2010Here Lies Love (soundtrack)

Mentioned in other articles

• Big beat GenreThe Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim from Brighton scored big hits with it in the late 1990s, such as The Rockafeller Skank (1998).

See also

• You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
• Palookaville