The Prodigy song Liam Howlett called a “turning point” for the group
From acid house to shoegaze and Britpop to grunge, the music scene of the 1990s was marked by warring factions and cultural divides. Throughout it all, though, one group stood entirely in a league of their own, uniting virtually every musical faction with their commanding arsenal of breakbeat electronica and an unwavering punk attitude.
The Prodigy are unlike any band that came before and haven’t really been matched in the 35 years since they first formed under the leadership of pioneering songwriter and DJ Liam Howlett. And he cited one particular song as being a turning point in the history of the outfit.
Dance music was everywhere when Howlett first formed The Prodigy back in 1990; Britain’s youth were captivated by the world of illegal raves, acid house beats, and the emergence of club culture. With that dance boom came waves of new artists and DJs eager to get in on the action, and Howlett was certainly among them.
Especially during those early years, he relied heavily upon sampling to add vocal tracks to his work, something that was commonplace within dance and electronic music at the time, and while this did produce some utterly incredible tracks, it was clear The Prodigy had the potential for more.
Howlett finally realised the missing piece of the puzzle when working on the band’s iconic sophomore record, Music for the Jilted Generation. Rather than relying solely on sampling, the group looked inward, to the incredible energy of Keith Palmer, better known as Maxim. He had entered The Prodigy with an already impressive résumé, immersing himself in the world of MCing and sound system culture when he was only in his teens. Why bother seeking out vocal samples when the group had a ready-made MC raring to go?
So, for the song ‘Poison’, later released as a single in 1995, it was Maxim who took on vocal duties, freestyling over the masterful beat crafted by Howlett. Audiences immediately responded to this new era for the group, with the single reaching 15 in the UK charts, and Maxim’s energy suited the sound of the group perfectly.
“[‘Poison’] was a turning point for us,” Howlett shared with Q magazine in 2008. “Freestyling over the music. When we did that, we thought, ‘Why the fuck haven’t we done this before?’”
Luckily, Maxim went on to take on a much more prevalent vocal role in later years with The Prodigy, culminating in some of the band’s biggest hits and opening the door for Keith Flint to perform vocals for them, too. Together, Maxim and Flint paved the way for efforts like ‘Breathe’ and ‘Firestarter’, which remain some of the group’s defining moments. In hindsight, it is pretty bizarre that Maxim wasn’t given free rein to freestyle over the music from the get-go.
After all, if you have ever seen The Prodigy perform live at any point over the past 20 years, it is clear that Maxim is a natural frontman, capable of commanding his audience of ‘warriors’ with little more than a glance.
Without ‘Poison’, the band might still have been relying solely on vocal samples, which might not have been too bad, but it certainly wouldn’t have established The Prodigy as the harbingers of electro-punk anarchy in the same way that albums ike Music for the Jilted Generation did.
