The Prodigy

Pictured above is an English chap named Keith Flint.  He is the most recognizable face of The Prodigy, a band that frightened your mother between the years 1997 and 1999.  It was Flint's "punk look" that made The Prodigy safe for grunge-listening teenagers in America and helped them become the best selling dance band of all time.  But Flint was not the band's lead singer, nor did he write any of their music.  His official role was "dancer" and he augmented this with occasional shouting.  The official M.C. was Maxim Reality, who occasionally augmented his shouting and singing with dancing.  The band's third member, Liam Howlett, was the guy who wrote and performed all of their music.  If any of this is confusing, the video below offers an illustration of Howlett playing music, Maxim Reality shouting, and Flint dancing:

Part of The Prodigy's cache was their origin in London's underground rave scene of the early-1990s.  This made me, a fourteen-year-old living in the suburbs, feel like I was traveling somewhere exotic and hip whenever I listened to their music, and the "underground" part in particular made me think I was experiencing something really rare.  This rare experience was shared by the two million other people in the U.S. who bought The Fat of the Land, and several million more worldwide.  

Their success makes complete sense in hindsight, because when your music video features rodents, bugs, worms and an alligator, it will obviously go multi-platinum: 

Controversy beset Prodigy with their infamous song, "Smack My Bitch Up," for its repeated phrase, "Change my pitch up/smack my bitch up."  Despite their erudition and eloquence, these lyrics sparked accusations of misogyny from the National Organization of Women, various media outlets, and scores of other people with ears, minds.  The Beastie Boys, for example, asked them not to play the song at the 1998 Reading festival, because it could, maybe, possibly have been offensive to victims of domestic abuse, perhaps.  The song's music video was banned from television for depicting drug abuse, drunk driving, fighting, nudity, violence against women, and sex.  Oh, and repeated use of the word "bitch."  Despite censorship, the magic of the internet makes it readily available:

The end really makes you think, doesn't it?  Uh, yeah.  Especially ridiculous were the band's attempts at quelling the controversy, like when Howlett claimed in an interview that the song was about "doing anything intensely, like being on stage - going for extreme manic energy," thereby suggesting that he did not, in fact, know what the word misogyny meant.  

The Prodigy waited five years to release new material, and when they did, it came in the form of one song called "Baby's Got a Temper," which sampled part of "Firestarter," reused its vocal rhythm, and exploited Flint's "punk look" for all it was worth:   

The song flopped and infighting ensued.  Howlett moved to dissociate Flint from the band, claiming the punk thing was all Flint and not indicative of Prodigy's work.  A full album (Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned) came in 2002 and another (Invaders Must Die) in 2008, both receiving negative reviews and selling poorly outside of Europe.  But they're still touring!  Those seeking a surreal mid-90s experience can see them in New York or Toronto in late-March.