Fatboy Slim

With the possible exception of the Chemical Brothers, no one did as much to take electronica mainstream as Fatboy Slim. Unlikely DJ hero Norman Cook was in ’80s guitar-pop band the Housemartins before making the move to dance music, but his worldwide 1998 smash, “The Rockafeller Skank,” fused samples of old-school rap and ’70s soul with modern DJ techniques, with insistent, irresistible results, helping define the “big beat” style. Slim was just as renowned for his remixing skills — who else could bring something fresh to a stone-cold funk classic like James Brown’s “Payback”? And long after most of his contemporaries had fallen off the radar, Cook continued to innovate; did you ever imagine a concept piece about Imelda Marcos could be funky? Slim makes it happen on “Please Don’t,” with help from David Byrne and Santigold. In Next Steps, Fatboy Slim ventures beyond the dance floor with psychedelic shamans and proto-punk gods.

Fatboy Slim will forever be known as one of the funkiest men ever to carry a British passport, and for good reason: We dare you to find a more in-your-face synth bass than that of club kicker “Love Island.” But he can do more than make you shake your butt — he mixes Jim Morrison’s moody vocals from an old Doors outtake into a swirl of swooping synths and sleek beats, stirring up a pulsing but mysterious atmosphere on “Sunset (Bird of Prey).” And on his BPA side project, Norman Cook nods to his own pop-rock past by framing Iggy Pop’s version of British band the Monochrome Set’s “He’s Frank” with ringing six-string riffs. Revel in the regal remixes of Fatboy Slim, with soul sensations and classic-rock cookers, in Deep Cuts.

With a long string of hit singles to his credit, Fatboy Slim is an elite electronica auteur, but when he puts his bag of remix tricks to work on other artists’ tunes, he always makes his own mark. He may have been playing with fire when he reworked the Rolling Stones’ landmark “Sympathy for the Devil,” but the Fatboy magic made the ’60s classic a hit all over again in 2003. Slim even puts a new skip in the step of Earth, Wind & Fire with his percolating workout on the R&B kingpins’ party-starting smash “September.” In fact, Norman Cook’s restless muse couldn’t even be contained exclusively under the Fatboy Slim banner — that’s him helming the BPA’s ska/Latin/pop implosion “Should I Stay or Should I Blow.”

When Norman Cook became Fatboy Slim, he helped spearhead the electronica revolution that stormed out of England, battering down the doors of musical convention all over the world and proving you didn’t need guitars to rock out, or a band to get down. Big Beat king Slim turned out party jams overflowing with crafty, crate-digger’s-delight samples and impossibly infectious hooks. Along the way, he remixed everyone from Cornershop to the Beastie Boys, created an elaborate concept album with David Byrne, and worked under pseudonyms like Pizzaman and the BPA. You could get dizzy trying to keep track of it all, let alone dancing to it. To help you keep your head on straight — and your feet in motion — we’ve assembled the ultimate Fatboy Slim collection right here. Like rapper Lord Finesse said on Slim’s “Rockafeller Skank,” “The funk soul brother — check it out now!”