#AONO20: Wake Up Call · Kool Keith
Wake Up Call is the sixth track on The Prodigy’s Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned album, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. To honour the occasion, here’s the story of where it all began — how the track was created, where it was recorded, who, besides Kool Keith from Ultramagnetic MCs, contributed vocals to the tune, and what Slayer had to do with it all. This post is part of our #AONO20 series, where we share the detailed story of the album, track by track.
This inspired Liam to consider releasing a full vocal version of the track featuring both Kool Keith and Maxim. On 17 December 2004, Liam mentioned this idea in his blog, also noting that ‘Wake Up’ was even being considered as one of the potential singles from the album. It never happened as well.
Liam Howlett in his blog: “I have new tracks like ‘Wake Up’ (full vocal version), ‘Warning’ and ‘Ded Ken’, but they are all potential singles after ‘Spitfire’, so they won’t be on b-side. […] I’m feelin’ ‘Wake Up’ full rap – Kool Keith w/ Maxim, yeah out”
Before performing the upgraded version of ‘Wake Up Call’, the band debuted a fresh live intro, built around a vocal sample from the track and officially called Wake Up Intro.
This intro was recently reconstructed from scratch by our team and we are excited to share it with you!
A little later, inspired by Nightbreed’s remix of ‘Spitfire’, Liam created a faster version of the track titled Wake The Fuck Up. We’ll discuss it in more detail in future articles, but for now, it’s worth mentioning that Kool Keith was officially credited as a co-author of ‘Wake The Fuck Up’, even though his vocals don’t appear on the track. Why this was done remains unclear.
‘Wake Up Call’ was a true breakthrough for Liam Howlett, reinvigorating his creativity and confidence. Ultimately, it gave the entire album its drive and brought a fresh energy to the band’s live performances. With this, the story of the track can be considered complete.
In the next #AONO20 post, we’ll share the most comprehensive story behind the making of Action Radar, where the lead vocal part was performed by Liam’s old mate, artist Paul Jackson, also known as DirtCandy.
Headmasters: SIXSHOT, SPLIT
Additional thanks to: Hannah Robinson
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