“The Rockafeller Skank” by Fatboy Slim

"The Rockafeller Skank" was the lead single from You've Come a Long Way, Baby, Fatboy Slim's second album, released on Skint in 1998, and it's big beat at its most gleefully dumb in the best possible way. A chopped-up vocal hook stutters over and over on top of breakbeats, a twangy surf-rock guitar lick and a bassline that just won't sit still, and then the track speeds up, slows down and scrambles itself like a DJ showing off for the back of the room.

Fatboy Slim produced it himself, with Simon Thornton engineering and mixing, and the credits share the writing with John Barry. It sounds like a patchwork of odds and ends stitched into one giant party.

It went to number six on the UK Singles Chart and topped the chart in Iceland for a week. In America it became his second single on the Billboard Hot 100 after "Praise You", peaking at 76. Years later it was still being counted among the great dance tracks: Rolling Stone put it at 199 in 2022 and Billboard at 83 in 2025.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.