Pyschosomatic addict insane

Yet another chapter in the hidden saga of British rap heads rocking with Long Island. Stateside, I grew up knowing The Prodigy for the "Breathe" video and the song "Smack My Bitch Up." And as Keith Flint featured most prominently in the "Breathe" video, I assumed for the longest that he was The Prodigy. It wasn't until much later that I realized they were a group, and only in the last few years did I somehow come to realize that their main songwriter was a guy named Liam Howlett who basically came of age on golden-era hip-hop and in 1999 he put out a DJ mix rife with it. 

The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One was the product of a DJ set Howlett did on BBC Radio 1 the year prior. Apparently, it was so well received he turned it into a commercial album release, with some minor adjustments. The big change everyone talks about is the removal of "Sgt. Pepper's," but for our purposes, Dirtchamber is noteworthy for the addition of JVC Force's "Strong Island" not so randomly placed in proximity to "Public Enemy #1." The whole mix is fantastic, and it's in "Section 6" that you'll hear both tracks amid all types of all shit. As a fun post-script to this whole thing,16 years later, The Prodigy blended Public Enemy classic "Shut Em Down" through Manfred Mann's "One Way Glass" for a track called "Shut Em Up," very much in the Dirtchamber vein. The moral of the story: They didn't call The Prodigy' and their compatriots big beat for nothing, and if British rap heads' reaction to all this is "Yea, so what," that only confirms for me I need to dig deeper into the '90s British electronic music I know best from Beavis & Butthead.