Fatboy Slim (GB)

About

Also known as: Fat Boy Slim, Fatboy Slin, ファットボーイ・スリム

Few DJs have left a mark on dance music quite like Fatboy Slim, the alias Norman Cook built into one of the defining sounds of the late 1990s. Rooted in big beat, his approach layers samples from wildly different genres over punchy rhythms and earworm vocal hooks, creating tracks that felt equally at home in a Brighton club or on mainstream radio. Classics like "The Rockafeller Skank", "Praise You" and "Weapon of Choice" came from his platinum certified second album and its follow up, cementing his reputation as one of the most commercially sharp yet genuinely weird figures in electronic music. Before all that, Cook was actually the bassist for indie band the Housemartins, who scored a UK number one in 1986. That experience left him itching to do something different, and after a stint with Beats International and a house alias or two, Fatboy Slim was the result. "Weapon of Choice" alone won six MTV Video Music Awards in 2001. He also collaborated with David Byrne on the concept album Here Lies Love, which later became a stage musical. These days he is better known for his DJ sets than studio output, and honestly, few people do it better.