Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. DXXXV--Fatboy Slim: The Rockafeller Skank

Once again, late for the sky....

I'm relatively sure my introduction to this week's tune was a music video, but whether it was on MTV or Much Music I can't recall.  I do remember that it was one of those songs that struck me instantly, and that I wanted to hear again--and the sooner the better....

I wrote about Fatboy Slim (aka, Norman Cook) in Vol. CCLIV, so I'll dispense with the bio for this week.  In the six years since that post, Mr. Cook continued to make music until late 2024, when he decided to give up creating music to concentrate on his DJ performances.  He was also nominated for a Tony Award (along with Talking Heads' frontman David Byrne) for writing the score for the musical Here Lies Love.  

"The Rockafella Skank" was the first single from Fatboy Slim's breakthrough album, the rather smokingly entitled You've Come a Long Way Baby.  The single would reach #6 in his native U.K., and #76 here in America.  Though I've noted the album before, as a reminder it hit #1 in Great Britain, and #34 in the United States.

Fun Fact:  "The Rockafella Skank" samples nine different songs, and Mr. Cook has stated that in order to get permission he had to release 100% of the song's royalties and has not received a penny of said royalties for himself.

In some ways (especially lyrically) "The Rockafeller Skank" seems to accomplish a lot with very little, but after doing my half-assed research I learned that Fatboy Slim created a truly wondrous piece of music with an awful lot of help (see "Fun Fact" above).  The song basically repeats the same two lines again and again (which makes the song's captivation all the more amazing), though what I've thought for years was sound effects turned out to actually be a lyric, repeating the word "rock" rapidly (and adding in a "rockafeller" here and there for shits and grins, one supposes).  I noted last week that sometimes a song just has a good groove, and I should note this week that "The Rockafeller Skank" just has a momentous groove.  Twenty years before hearing it I never would have imagined that such a song would fill my soul, but that's one of the continuing wonders of my musical adventure--and why it's included here in the annals of Friday Night Jukebox.

Lyric Sheet:  "Right about now, the funk soul brother/Check it out now, the funk soul brother..."

Fuck Donald Trump

Peace,

emaycee