Smack My Bitch Up

"Smack My Bitch Up"
Single by The Prodigy
from the album The Fat of the Land
Released17 November 1997 (1997-11-17)
Genre
Length
  • 5:43 (album version)
  • 4:45 (edit)
LabelXL
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)Liam Howlett
The Prodigy singles chronology
"Breathe"
(1996)
"Smack My Bitch Up"
(1997)
"Baby's Got a Temper"
(2002)
Music video
Smack My Bitch Up (DVD edit) on Vimeo

"Smack My Bitch Up" is a song by English rave group The Prodigy. It was released in November 1997 as the third and final single from their third album, The Fat of the Land (1997). In 2013, Mixmag readers voted it the third greatest dance track of all time.[4]

The song caused considerable controversy because of its suggestive title and explicit music video, which depicted scenes of drunken and drug-fuelled sexual assault and violence. The refrain, which consists only of the line "Change my pitch up/Smack my bitch up", was sampled from the song "Give the Drummer Some" by the Ultramagnetic MCs. The song also contains a brief medley of Shahin Badar vocalising alap. In 2010, it was voted as the most controversial song of all time in a survey conducted by PRS for Music.[5]

Prior to the release of the single, Liam Howlett was presented with three remixes of the title song, one by Jonny L, one by DJ Hype and one by Slacker. Howlett chose the DJ Hype remix to be released on the single. The Jonny L remix was released through a free CD that came along with an issue of Muzik magazine, while the Slacker remix was never officially released, although it surfaced on a rare and limited set of white labels.

  1. ^ "The Prodigy, "Smack My Bitch Up" SPIN". Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  2. ^ "Q&A: The Prodigy Look Back on the Most Aggressive Career in Electronic History". 27 April 2015. Archived from the original on 21 August 2019. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
  3. ^ "This Is Techno, Vol. 3 – Various Artists – Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
  4. ^ "What is the Greatest Dance Track of All Time?". Mixmag. 15 February 2013. Archived from the original on 8 March 2015.
  5. ^ "Smack My Bitch Up voted most controversial pop song". Mirror.co.uk. 24 November 2010. Archived from the original on 24 August 2018.