The Dust Brothers, who for all of their talent and success as producers, have been cursed with the whole Chemical Bros./Dust Bros. confusion. To set the record straight once and for all, the Chemical Brothers (who are from the UK) were fans of the American Dust Brothers and decided they'd use the same stagename, never thinking they would achieve the fame and fortune that they did. Once they became famous as the British Dust Brothers, they had to change their name to the Chemical Brothers at the request of John and Mike.

The Dust Brothers started out working together on a California college radio station during the mid-1980s. They hosted a weekly show called King Gizmo & E.Z. Mike's Big Beat Showcase. At that time very few DJs were playing hip-hop music, let alone a show entirely formatted in that genre.

As the history unfolds itself, the Dust Bros. had their first hit with Tone Loc. Yet it was very soon afterwards that Mike and John were introduced to the Beastie Boys through their friend Matt Dike. Using the samples they had collected with the original intent of releasing an album of "Dust Bros." music, Mike and John lent the backing track for what would later become Paul's Boutique. The Beastie Boys supplied the vocals and an occasional guitar riff on the album, but it is the Dust Brothers' memorable collage of samples that makes Paul's Boutique so different and so outstanding even to this day.

Following the success of the hit single "Loser," Beck made the decision to work with the Dust Bros. Just like the Beastie Boys did following the success of Licensed to Ill, Beck had the entire world calling him a one-hit wonder. To combat this, Beck and the Dust Bros. took their time creating what later became Beck's Odelay: another album that was sample rich and carried the familiar feel of Paul's Boutique.

Having achieved so much success and attention over Odelay, the Dust Bros. were highly in demand for remixes and film scores. John and Mike enlisted the help of Charles Goodan and Art Hodge to create what later became the Fight Club Soundtrack. In what seemed like a blink of the eye, the Dust Bros. had gone from being a well kept secret that only Beastie Boys fans knew of to being the producers on the tip of everyone's tongue. The Dust Bros. later went on to work with the Rolling Stones and teen sensation Hanson.