You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Released on 19 October 1998 by Skint in the UK and a day later by Astralwerks in the US, the album reached number one in the UK and 34 on the Billboard 200. It earned Cook a Brit Award in 1999 and went platinum in the US. Four singles came from it: The Rockafeller Skank, Gangster Tripping, Praise You and Right Here, Right Now. All four peaked in the UK top ten. Build It Up - Tear It Down was a promotional single.

Cook built it from obscure vinyl, sampling the bits he liked and keeping a library of them on floppy disks. He loaded them into an Akai S900 linked by MIDI to an Atari ST, and worked with his engineer Simon Thornton at his home studio in Brighton, the House of Love. By his account the only change from the first album was a second S950 sampler. He also chained two drum kits on the same pattern, one with character and one with attack. He said he did Skank, Praise You and Right Here, Right Now in the same week because they were on the same Atari disk.

The title comes from a Virginia Slims cigarette slogan. The UK cover photograph, by way of Rex Features, shows a young man in a T-shirt reading I'm #1 so why try harder, taken at a 1983 festival in Danville, Virginia. Cook spotted it in the Guardian and as of 2025 had not been able to identify him. The US cover shows shelves of records.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said it came damn close to being the definitive big beat album. In 2000 it ranked number 81 in a Q readers' poll of the 100 greatest British albums. Pitchfork's 2024 Sunday Review described it as pure pop, less a club night than a boardwalk arcade. The album was reissued for its 20th anniversary in March 2018 by BMG, with a limited Meal Deal edition in a pizza box.