Music For The Jilted Generation - Album Information

Album Information

The album is largely a response to the corruption of the rave scene in Britain by its mainstream status as well as Great Britain's Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which criminalised raves and parts of rave culture. This is exemplified in the song "Their Law" with the spoken word intro and the predominant lyric, the "Fuck 'em and their law" sample. Many years later, after the controversy died down, Liam Howlett derided the title of the album, which he referred to as "stupid", and maintained that the album was never meant to be political in the first place.

Many of the samples featured on the album are sound clips from movies. "Intro" features a sample from the film The Lawnmower Man, "Their Law" samples Smokey and the Bandit, "Full Throttle" features a reverse sample from the original Star Wars movie, "The Heat (The Energy)" features a sample for Poltergeist III, and "Claustrophobic Sting" features a sample from the film 2001.

When Liam Howlett came to the cutting room for the final phase in the album production he realized that all the tracks he had originally planned for wouldn't fit onto a CD, so "One Love" had to be edited, "The Heat (The Energy)" was slightly cut, and the track called "We Eat Rhythm" was left out. "We Eat Rhythm" was later released on a free cassette with Select Magazine in October 1994 entitled Select Future Tracks. Liam Howlett later asserted that he felt the edit of "One Love" and "Full Throttle" could have been dropped from the track listing.

"The Narcotic Suite" includes live flute parts, played by Phil Bent. Originally, Howlett asked Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull to play this part or to give permission to use samples of one of his flute parts; according to Anderson, the letter from Howlett got stuck in his office and when Ian found it, the album was already released.

The cover of the inner artwork of the record was analyzed in an article published in 2008 in the techno underground Magazine Datacide. The author compares the picture with a persiflage which was published in 2003 on the Kid606 album Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You. The article not only describes the representation of raves in graphic artwork but also describes the marketing strategy of the band with the album and criticizes it:

With the picture The Prodigy are taking a stance in the conflict of ravers versus the police in those days. At the same time this statement is used to market a rebellious attitude. The picture is part of the artwork of a record - which is of course a commodity. The teenage (and male) consumer ought to identify himself with the presented rebellion. With the help of the artwork a certain image of The Prodigy is established: They should be seen as anti-stars, who define themselves through refusal and opposition .