Songfacts®:

• "Star 69," alternatively titled "Star 69 (What the F--k)," is a song by British big beat artist Fatboy Slim from his third studio album, Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars (2000). Released both as a double A-side with "Weapon of Choice" and as a standalone single, the track peaked at #10 in the UK and #3 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart.
  
  The title alludes to the *69 callback feature available in North America, which allows users to return their most recent incoming call.
• The track's defining feature is a recurring vocal sample: "They know what is what, but they don't know what is what, they just strut. What the f--k?" This sample, sourced from American house DJ Roland Clark's "I Get Deep," also appears in another Fatboy Slim song, "Song for Shelter," from the same album.
• Due to its explicit content, "Star 69" contributed to the album receiving a "Parental Advisory" label and was omitted from clean versions of Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars. The sanitized album edition also modified the original cover art, removing the visible thigh gap of the female figure and replacing the advisory sticker with a "Kiddies' Clean Version" label.
  
  Clark's "I Get Deep" was later sampled in Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj's 2017 track "Swish Swish."
• Tim Fleming and Damian Harris directed the music video for "Star 69," which features two women dancing interspersed with shots of a Roland TB-303 synthesizer. Fatboy Slim is a well-known enthusiast of the TB-303, even dedicating the song "Everybody Needs a 303" to it on his 1996 debut album, Better Living Through Chemistry.
  
  In a 2022 interview with "Synth History," Cook elaborated on his love for the instrument: "Everybody needs a 303. Most importantly, though people might not know it, what they need is a real 303, not a clone. The clones are good, but they're not a 303."