COVER BOY

Add Prodigy singer-scamp Keith Flint to the list of people who have been featured on the cover of Rolling Stone--but aren’t too happy about it. Flint is pictured on the front of the annual “Hot” issue rounding up the current pop culture trends, which will be on stands Tuesday.

The band had stipulated that it would only do a cover if all four members were pictured, not just the visually striking Flint.

“They feel cheated and lied to and taken advantage of,” says Sioux Zimmerman, the British band’s New York-based publicist, though she says they’re pleased with the story itself.

Rolling Stone senior editor Mark Kemp says he understands the band’s anger. But the band’s success, he says, forced the hand.

“At the very last minute in our production schedule, the album comes out at No. 1 and sells 200,000 copies,” he says. “We had a quick staff meeting and decided that we had to put Prodigy on this cover and crash the story into this issue. We weren’t really happy with group shots we’d seen and we found a really provocative picture of Keith. It was purely a news decision.”

This is the third time in the past two years that a pop act has expressed displeasure with a Rolling Stone cover. Alanis Morissette had agreed to do a cover story for rival Spin magazine first, but Rolling Stone--against the artist’s wishes--rushed out a cover first. And last year, after failing to get Pearl Jam to participate in an in-depth story, the magazine did an unflattering piece about Eddie Vedder’s pre-fame years, with the singer pictured on the cover.