Neneh Cherry - The Rhythm of Contamination

It's not easy to frame or contain the importance of Neneh Cherry: there are the hits, of course, but also her fundamental role as a bridge between post-punk and a new way of understanding r'n'b as a borderland of crossover and contamination. There's the experimentation and the connection to jazz, but also the political commitment and the pride of staying independent from the market. There's the curiosity that leads her to perform as a deejay or to rework songs by Suicide, the Stooges and MF Doom (on the same album!).

Raised in a household steeped in art, with a painter mother and a musician father, she is the adoptive daughter of Don Cherry. From an early age she absorbed an anti-conformist, cosmopolitan outlook, living between the United States, Sweden and England. Already with her numerous teenage bands, including the sparky Slits and the elusive Rip Rig + Panic, she showed she couldn't be boxed in by stylistic fences and easy labels. Her experiences in punk and underground London, together with a broad and varied cultural formation, helped shape a vocal approach rooted in performance, one that blends a theatrical dimension with a love of improvisation and provocation. Memorable, in this sense, was her 1988 appearance on Top Of The Pops, pregnant with her second daughter Tyson: one of the most powerful gestures of female power of the era. Adding to this explosive energy was an extremely precocious start, which saw her playing with the aforementioned Slits at just fifteen.

With the release of the explosive Raw Like Sushi (1989), a multifaceted album driven by the hit "Buffalo Stance", she delivered a groundbreaking debut, fiercely feminist and multicultural. Shocking an audience still unused to seeing women so young yet so self-assured, Neneh Cherry managed to combine pop sensibility, experimentation and provocation. Her role in the emerging trip-hop scene was also significant: the first sessions of that dark, mysterious sound took shape in her London flat, and it's hard to imagine the music of Massive Attack and Tricky existing without her – in this sense, it would later be the single "Kong" (2018) that closed the circle of influences, echoes and cross-pollinations.
Her second album Homebrew (1992), darker and further removed from commercial winks, proved that simply replicating her debut was never an option. The single "7 Seconds" (1994) with Youssou N'Dour and the release of Man (1996) marked a further turning point, steering her toward an independent path far from the mainstream, in keeping with a personal evolution that remained vividly creative.
The elegant experimentation of the later The Cherry Thing (2012) reconnects with her roots, while the subsequent, more electronic Blank Project (2014) and Broken Politics (2018) represent a sensational second artistic life, paired with political commitment and a substantial interest in electronic music.

Across a discography marked by long gaps and substantial shifts, Neneh Cherry has shown a towering charisma that has been a major inspiration for those who came after her. Her legacy has emerged forcefully in some of the leading female artists of recent decades, such as M.I.A., Robyn, FKA Twigs and Little Simz, pointing to a new way of being versatile in contemporary music.

From punk to "Raw Like Sushi"

Neneh Mariann Karlsson was born in Stockholm in 1964, to Swedish painter Moki Karlsson and musician Ahmadu Jah from Sierra Leone. After her parents separated, she was raised by her stepfather, American jazz musician Don Cherry, whose surname she also took. She spent a childhood immersed in art and music, moving between Sweden and the United States, where the family came into contact with numerous artists. She lived in the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York and for a time was neighbours with Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads.
At fourteen she left school and moved to London. The following year, while following her stepfather on tour, she met the Slits and moved into a squat in London with singer Ari Up. Her first jobs consisted of making badges and fanzines and helping staple together copies of the first issue of the famous British magazine "i-D".
When she arrived in London she was swept up by punk, a culture she felt deeply akin to. While playing with the Slits she lived as a squatter, in illegally occupied housing. She also played in many other bands, including the Cherries, New Age Steppers and Rip Rig + Panic. She also worked as a radio deejay on the pirate reggae station "Dread Broadcasting Corporation".

Her solo career began in 1982 with the protest song "Stop The War", about the Falklands War. Her solo album, however, only arrived in 1989, bearing a title that was a statement in itself: Raw Like Sushi.
It opens with "Buffalo Stance", the song that remains her biggest hit to this day. Built around an electronic hip-hop beat, it's a track that retains eighties elements, such as the scratching, while pointing toward new crossovers with nineties-style club culture. It's built on an abrasive sample taken from Malcolm McLaren's "Buffalo Gals", a landmark hip-hop track. Neneh Cherry raps tight verses, but what's striking is how naturally she then sings the iconic chorus, an anthology-worthy declaration of female power. This ability to shapeshift is the strength of the whole album, a catalogue of approaches across which she switches tone and style with total ease.

An early version of "Buffalo Stance", titled "Looking Good Diving With The Wild Bunch", appeared on the B-side of the 1986 single "Looking Good Diving" by the duo Morgan-McVey (produced by Stock Aitken Waterman). The single was unsuccessful, but the track was re-recorded with Tim Simenon of Bomb The Bass, turning it into an international hit (number 3 in the UK and on the Billboard Hot 100, number 1 in the Netherlands and Sweden).
The tough, sarcastic rapper gives way to a softer, soul-tinged voice on "Manchild", a trip-hop track ahead of its time that also involved Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack. The lyrics, though, are anything but gentle, mocking the immaturity and fragility of a grown man. After the danceable pop of "Kisses On The Wind", which carries notable Latin touches, "Inna City Mamma" returns to exploring and pushing past boundaries. A near-dub bass line and a rhythmic core rooted in hip-hop combine with an intense vocal performance recounting urban hardship.

The explosive rap of "The Next Generation" recalls the mic approach of LL Cool J, while "Love Ghetto" boasts a powerful, funky bass line and a driving beat, building a refined r'n'b arrangement. Relationships with others are at the heart of the album, even when they prove troubled, as on "Heart", an electronic pop-rap, and "Phoney Ladies", a robotic little tune over which energetic raps and a sing-along chorus are laid. One of the boldest moments is the sizzling "Outré Risqué Locomotive", a funk track arranged with assorted oddities worthy of Prince's genius. "So Here I Come" closes the record in explosive fashion, distilling the aesthetic coordinates of the whole album: a hip-hop groove to rap and occasionally sing over, pop openings and sensual winks, and an attitude that harks back to her punk roots.

Raw Like Sushi stands out for its eclectic fusion of Eighties pop genres, with Neneh Cherry alternating between singing and rapping, backed by a wide range of instrumentation. With a charisma worthy of Madonna and compositions that could win over funk-jazz fans too, it's a late-Eighties pop album that anticipates the pop/r'n'b/hip-hop crossovers of many of the superstars of later decades. It has the restless energy of youth, and also a touch of its dazzling naivety.

The Nineties, from Homebrew to Man

The second album, the more introspective Homebrew (1992), can't replicate the surprise effect of the debut. The sensual jazz-rap of "Sassy" (with Guru) and the energetic beat and compressed guitars of "Money Love" (featuring J$), an electronic funk-rock with assorted scratching, make for an energetic opening one-two. The following, languid "Move With Me" instead heads in a trip-hop direction, highlighting supple soul vocals.
Further moments of jazz-hip-hop fusion ("I Ain't Gone Under Yet"), electronic r'n'b ("Twisted") and a curious synthetic funk-pop like "Buddy X", a frontal attack on machismo, further broaden the stylistic spectrum. Also notable is the altogether more traditional funk-pop-rock of "Trout", helped along by a contribution from Michael Stipe of R.E.M.

Even though some tracks lean too heavily on her rapping skills, Homebrew boasts more sophisticated and ambitious arrangements, with more meditative lyrics that also tackle complex themes, as is the case with racism on the closing "Red Paint". If Raw Like Sushi was an explosion, this is a more considered work exploring a musical world spanning pop, r'n'b, hip-hop, jazz and rock. The interplay between singing and rapping has been refined, even if Neneh Cherry doesn't always find her own personal approach, especially with the latter.

The third album didn't arrive until 1996, titled Man. It gathers intense tracks, vibrant with emotion, far removed from the exuberant lightness of the past. The single "Woman" reworks James Brown's "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" and kicks off a tracklist steeped in soul and trip-hop. Even better is "7 Seconds", a hit single recorded with Youssou N'Dour, already released elsewhere and reprised here: a trip-hop hit poised between Africa and Europe.

Having lost her youthful spark, though, the songs risk not always having enough character. With rap almost entirely set aside, this new dimension leads her to emotional songs like "Feel It", radio-friendly rock numbers like the flirtatious "Kootchi", or a Lenny Kravitz-style funk-rock track like "Hornbeam". As a singer she has grown enormously since her debut, as shown too in her interpretation of other people's songs, here above all in Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man". The slow, atmospheric "Carry Me" is another significant trip-hop contribution, a style in which she still proves capable of standing out.

Collaborations, new albums and creative reinterpretations: from the 2000s to the present

Neneh Cherry prioritizes her family life, and her music career takes a back seat, especially compared to her beloved children. Her solo career is essentially put on hold, to the point that in the 2000s she returns with the CirKus project, appearing without being the main focus on two albums, "Laylow" (2006) and "Medicine" (2009). Spurred on by Stockholm's vibrant jazz scene, in 2012 she breaks a sixteen-year hiatus and collaborates with the Norwegian-Swedish trio The Thing, led by the charismatic saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, on The Cherry Thing, made up of seven covers and one new track written by Neneh herself ("Cashback"). The tense, eccentric style of these reinterpretations is down to both Cherry and the musicians, who make the album one of the most eclectic and brilliant jazz releases of the decade. Together they do justice to Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" and MF Doom and Madlib's "Accordion", also paying tribute to Martina Topley-Bird with "Too Tough To Die" and catching fire with the Stooges' "Dirt". There's also room for two visionary tributes to the free jazz of Don Cherry ("Golden Heart") and Ornette Coleman ("What Reason Could I Give"), shared touchstones of inspiration for Neneh's quartet with The Thing.

But Cherry doesn't stop at these personal reinterpretations, and decides to reshape this repertoire even further. The same year, again on the celebrated Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound, comes the remix version of The Cherry Thing, featuring among others Four Tet, Carmen Villain, Jim O'Rourke and Merzbow, in even bolder, more deconstructed versions of the covers. These are the sounds Neneh is working with most at this point, which lead her, over another two years of work, to deliver her solo comeback Blank Project (2014), her fourth solo album, produced and mixed once again by Kieran Hebden.
The album opens on tiptoe, with an almost a-cappella track: "Across The Water" is in fact accompanied by a sparse percussion groove underscoring the vocals: “With my hands across the water, with my two feet in the sea/ My fear is for my daughters But will God wash over me?/ Take our lambs off to the slaughter, take their lives so perfectly/ Like your bricks are filled with mortar, cast your wisdom to the brede”. In contrast, this is followed by the title track, a manifesto for the entire project in its most extreme form: a minimal weave of acidic electronic beats, insistent jazzy percussion and a handful of notes from traditional instruments or synthesizers accompanies Neneh Cherry's soulful vocals.

The voice, with its narrative flow and emotional weight, is indeed the absolute star of the album, proving it needs no embellishment or sonic architecture beyond careful reverb, which makes it vibrate through space, and a few backing vocals, which harmonize it, reinforcing the meaning of the words.
The winning formula of Blank Project repeats itself with different tonal colors, from "Naked" to "Dossier", with dance passages more marked by a nineties flavor ("Weightless"), more lyrical, emphatic moments ("422") and a duet with Swedish musician Robyn on one of the album's most pop moments ("Out Of The Black"), closing with the peculiar "Everything", a dance track with a dual soul, caught between a driving groove and cosmic synthetic openings.

Cherry understands that this is not the time to "stay silent", and returns four years after Blank Project with a less synthetic album that voices even sharper cultural and political positions. On every track of Broken Politics (2018), Neneh recounts what she sees – from the coasts of Calais in France to the suburbs of the United States, addressing marginalization – positioning herself as an artist aware of her own responsibilities: “It’s my politics living in the slow jam/ Everything low, rain slow/ Play for supreme/ Delightful, painful/ Play with me synchronized/ I’m a Pisces hanging from the vine/ Live it out a day at a time/ My name is Neneh” (from "Synchronized Devotion"). The lead single is one of the most powerful tracks in her discography, "Kong", produced by 3D (Massive Attack) and Hebden – once again producing the whole album – with an iconic cover photograph by renowned visual artist Wolfgang Tillmans.

Broken Politics reaffirms Cherry's lethal musicality and storytelling skills, linking her both to the tradition of r'n'b/soul singer-songwriters like Curtis Mayfield and to contemporary politically-charged artistic projects such as Matana Roberts's "Coin Coin" (begun in 2011). The record is indeed full of references to African American history and culture, from samples of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry's longtime collaborator, on "Natural Skin Deep", to references to slavery on "Poem Daddy" and "Shot Gun Shack". The sound, the groove and the pulse of the record once again come from the melting pot of mixed-heritage experiences of the UK, from the retro-futuristic 90s productions of Bristol and London, as in the perfect one-two of "Fallen Leaves" and "Kong". The harp and vibraphone arrangements of the opening track, of "Synchronized Devotion", "Black Monday" and "Soldier", so characteristic of Four Tet's production – just think of New Energy (2017) – recall Zeena Parkins's contributions to Bjork's albums.

Neneh Cherry's path defines a fully rounded artist, for whom the music produced is never detached from good practice, long gestation periods and dialogue with other art forms – essential within the genres that have influenced her. Her hip-hop past, the manifesto track "Woman", the famous hit "7 Seconds" with Youssou N'Dour, as well as her deep artistic partnership with her husband – musician and producer Cameron McVey – and her collaborations with 3D, The Thing and Four Tet, are all part of the journey of a politically engaged feminist artist who sets herself no genre limits and never falls in line with the timing and methods of the music industry, all while never straying from musical practice. Neneh carries forward a "quiet revolution", in times when we are bombarded by news and fake news and human rights are trampled by world powers.

Her significant legacy is well represented by the tribute collection The Versions (2022), which presents further versions of her songs in the form of covers performed by women and non-binary artists Robyn, Mapei, Sia, ANOHNI, Greentea Peng, Jamila Woods, Tyson, Sudan Archives, Seinabo Sey, Kelsey Lu and Honey Dijon. Once again, Neneh doesn't see her own songs as fixed, crystallized entries in a discography, but as waypoints in a cultural and political nomadism that can transform, at any moment, into an opportunity for encounter and regeneration through plural, shared work.

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