Fatboy Slim - You've Come A Long Way, Baby
Grade: A-
By Matt Levine
 Former Housemartin Norman Cook, returns for the second time in his new
incarnation as Fatboy Slim, Britain's big-beat maestro, with You've Come a Long Way,
Baby. With You've..., Fatboy Slim explores slicker electronic territory and creates a well-crafted, easily-danceable disc. The words blasted onto the record might be on a tape
loop and not make sense, but they are placed in the "songs" to keep the beat more than
anything else. Fatboy Slim's music revolves around the beat of the song and he tends to
that rotation very well. Unlike many albums concentrating more on the danceability of the
music than melody, You've Come a Long Way, Baby, features a variety of tracks. The
tracks range from the explosive ("The Rockafeller Skank," "Gangster Tripping") to the
relatively tame ("Praise You," which sounds reminiscent of White Town's "Your Woman"
and can be heard presently in a Nike commercial). Fatboy Slim's You've Come a Long
Way, Baby ranks as one of the best electronically-based albums of the year and nicely
shows the progression electronic music has made since the release of Kraftwerk's
epochal debut in 1975.
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