The Prodigy

Braintree

The Prodigy began in Braintree, Essex. Liam Howlett, an 18-year-old DJ who had left the hip-hop group Cut 2 Kill, met the dancers Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill at one of his gigs. Howlett gave Flint a mix tape with some of his own songs on the other side and scratched the word Prodigy on the cassette, after the Moog Prodigy synthesizer he used. The three formed the group on 5 October 1990, and the MC Maxim joined at their first gig in February 1991, improvising lyrics on stage.

XL Recordings signed them for four singles. Charly, built on samples from the animated Charley Says films, came out in August 1991, and Everybody in the Place followed at number 2. Howlett recorded the debut, Experience, at his home facility, Earthbound Studios, and XL released it in September 1992. It reached number 12 and went platinum. The Guardian later called Out of Space fantastic, futuristic pop music.

Jilted

Howlett began the second album in 1993, and much of it answered the Criminal Justice Act, which targeted raves. Music for the Jilted Generation opens with a spoken line about taking his work back underground to stop it falling into the wrong hands. Howlett said the wrong hands were people who saw the Prodigy as a commercial band. The record brought heavier breakbeats, a guest turn from Pop Will Eat Itself on Their Law and a three-part suite, The Narcotic Suite.

Released on 4 July 1994, it entered the UK chart at number 1 and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Its singles were One Love, No Good (Start the Dance), Voodoo People and Poison. Alexis Petridis of the Guardian wrote that it broke free of Experience's rave conventions into a style entirely the Prodigy's own. The band declined Top of the Pops and other national television, and in 1995 Jim Davies joined the live line-up on guitar, followed by Gizz Butt.

The Fat of the Land

Firestarter, released in March 1996, was their first song with a full vocal. Howlett had recorded it as an instrumental, but Flint wanted to write his own lyric. The video, directed by Walter Stern in a disused Underground tunnel, introduced his punk look and his move from dancer to frontman. It spent three weeks at number 1 in the UK, and Breathe followed it there that November. American labels bid for the band, and Madonna's Maverick won, in an estimated $5 million deal announced in February 1997.

The album was delayed while Howlett played Tomb Raider on PlayStation, to the point that Martin James, who ran a PlayStation league for Muzik, was asked to send games to Thornhill instead. The Fat of the Land came out on 30 June 1997 and entered the UK and US charts at number 1. It sold 317,000 copies in its first British week, a Guinness record for a dance album, and an estimated 10 million worldwide. A BBC Music review thought it almost single-handedly responsible for breaking electronica in the US. Howlett told Spin that making it was no pressure at all.

The band headlined Glastonbury on its opening night in June 1997 and Lollapalooza that summer. Smack My Bitch Up reached number 8 in the UK, and Jonas Åkerlund's video for it won two MTV Video Music Awards in 1998. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and lost to Radiohead's OK Computer.

Since

Howlett mixed The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One in 1999 from a BBC Radio 1 guest slot, and Thornhill's departure was announced in April 2000. Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned topped the UK chart in 2004, and the compilation Their Law: The Singles 1990-2005 reached number 1 in 2005. Invaders Must Die (2009) came out on the band's own label, Take Me to the Hospital, and also reached number 1, with Dave Grohl on drums for Run with the Wolves. The Day Is My Enemy (2015) was the first album on which Maxim and Flint took an active part in the songwriting, and it too reached number 1. No Tourists followed in 2018 on BMG.

In March 2022 the band announced a UK tour for the 25th anniversary of The Fat of the Land, and it played the National Bowl in Milton Keynes in August 2026. Howlett describes the style as electronic punk and names early electro, Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine among his influences.