Songfacts®:

• Fans often refer to "The Rockafeller Skank" as "Funk Soul Brother" due to its distinctive vocal sample:
  
  Right about now, the funk soul brother
  Check it out now, the funk soul brother
  
  This line originates from "Vinyl Dogs Vibe" by Vinyl Dogs, which features a spoken-word introduction by New York rapper Lord Finesse. The original line is:
  
  Check it out right about now
  It's no other than the funk soul brother, the Lord Finesse
  And you're welcome to the world of the Vinyl Dogs right about now
  
  In a 2019 interview with 247HH, Lord Finesse revealed he was surprised when he first heard "The Rockafeller Skank," as he was expecting a hip-hop track instead of a big beat hit. He regretted not reviewing the song or contract before agreeing to the sample, calling it a "big mistake."
• The "Rockafeller" in the title comes from the distorted vocal that repeats something like "Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-rockafella-rockafella."
  
  This may or may not be a Jay-Z sample, possibly from his 1997 song "Who You Wit," where at the beginning he says, "Roc-A-Fella, y'all," a reference to his record label, Roc-A-Fella Records. Slim didn't clear every sample, so he's not telling.
  
  As for "Skank," that's how you dance to ska music, and you can certainly skank to this track if you want to.
• Fatboy Slim had to forfeit 100% of the royalties for "The Rockafeller Skank" due to extensive sampling. One notable sample is "Sliced Tomatoes" by Just Brothers. Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, got the idea to use this Northern Soul track while DJing in 1997, noting the crowd's positive reaction. "You could see people loving it and at the same time thinking, 'I don't normally dance to this kind of stuff.' I logged it in my brain for future reference," he explained to David Nowell in The Story of Northern Soul. Just Brothers receive approximately 70% of the song's royalties.
  
  Other songs sampled in "The Rockafeller Skank" include "Beat Girl" by John Barry, "I Fought the Law" by The Bobby Fuller Four, "Join the Gang" by David Bowie, "Who You Wit II" by JAY-Z, "Soup" by J.J.All Stars, "Twistin' 'N' Twangin'" by Duane Eddy, and "Why Can't You Love Me" by Brian Poole & the Tremeloes.
• Norman Cook has called "The Rockafeller Skank" his "Bohemian Rhapsody." He quipped to Sound on Sound in 2017: "I've read about how Queen recorded all the different sections and spliced the multi-track together to get the choral section and whatever. This was the one and only tune where we mixed the beginning and the end bit at my house, then we had to go to Simon [Thorton, engineer]'s house to record the slowy down bit, put that on a DAT, bring that back to my house and then edit it onto what we'd already done."
• "The Rockafeller Skank" was released on June 8, 1998, as the lead single from Fatboy Slim's second album, You've Come a Long Way, Baby. The single went to #6 in the UK and topped the Icelandic chart. It also peaked at #76 on the Billboard Hot 100.
  
  Cook was pleasantly surprised by the track's reception and success, telling The Story of Northern Soul: "It seemed to be an instant thing among everyone who heard it. We hoped something would happen for it, but I never thought it would be a Top 10 single up there with the likes of George Michael and Madonna."
• The official music video for "The Rockafeller Skank," directed by Doug Aitken, begins with a woman driving through the desert, shifts to a nightclub where Fatboy Slim is DJing, and ends with a surfer riding the ocean waves.
  
  An alternative video was created by Hollywood director Spike Jonze. While working on his first film, Being John Malkovich, Jonze became obsessed with the song. One night, he grabbed a boom box and some quirky clothes and headed to Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. There, he danced spontaneously on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inventing a unique character. He sent the footage to Fatboy Slim, who was familiar with Jonze's work on iconic music videos like "Buddy Holly" by Weezer and "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys. Impressed, Fatboy Slim invited Jonze to recreate the concept for his next single, "Praise You."
• "The Rockafeller Skank" has been featured in numerous films, television shows, and video games. One of its most memorable appearances is in the prom scene of the 1999 teen romantic comedy She's All That, directed by Robert Iscove and starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook. Ahead of the dance routine, Usher, who plays the prom DJ, tells the crowd: "Right about now, we're going to do that dance I taught you, and I know you've been practicing!"
  
  Speaking to HuffPost in 2019, Iscove elaborated on the decision to use the song: "There was some discussion about using it because it had come out six months before, and so it would've been a year that it had been out by the time the film was released. But 'The Rockafeller Skank' was just such an amazing number and we went, 'We'll give it new life.' Which we did."
  
  The song has also been featured in films like American Pie (1999) and Bruce Almighty (2003), as well as in television shows such as Sex and the City ("La Douleur Exquise!") and Friends ("The One with the Girl Who Hits Joey"). Additionally, it appears in video games including FIFA 99 and Just Dance 2.
• Fatboy Slim performed "The Rockafeller Skank" at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London. He played the song on the top of a bus that slowly transformed into a gigantic inflatable octopus.
• Before the album version of "The Rockafeller Skank" on You've Come a Long Way, Baby, there's a brief dialogue between a radio DJ and a caller named Brad requesting the song. This conversation is an actual recording from the Boston radio station WBCN (now WWBX). The recording was heard by Fatboy Slim, who convinced the radio station to let him include the audio on the album.
• In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked "The Rockafeller Skank" at #199 on their list of the 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time.