Neneh Cherry

December 1988. On the stage of the historic show Top Of The Pops, which had seen a string of iconic performances come and go, a young woman was about to appear who was destined to get everyone talking. Some might have recognised her from her long years paying her dues in London's seething underground scene, but nothing could have prepared anyone for what was about to unfold. Today nobody bats an eye at a baby bump on display during a live performance, but back then watching a pregnant woman perform, seven months along no less, was considered almost taboo, a gamble to be avoided at all costs.
And yet there she was, Neneh Cherry, in a copper-coloured jacket and a pair of vertiginous sneakers, putting every rumour about the supposed risks to rest and delivering a textbook performance of "Buffalo Stance", a song soon to become a global hit. There was plenty of chatter, no shortage of controversial opinions, but the die had been cast and yet another barrier torn down once and for all: ultimately, though, this was nothing more than the culmination of a journey that had already demolished fences of every kind (irrelevant which), and which with that sensational performance paved the way for a startling artistic hybrid, one that had now found the perfect balance to reach pop audiences too.

Neneh the predestined one, daughter of artists, taken under the protective wing of her stepfather, that Don Cherry who was a towering figure in the development of jazz language, and from whom she would take her surname. Neneh, split between her native Sweden and the United States, which she would leave at just fifteen to head for London, drawn by the extraordinary cultural upheavals shaking the British capital. Neneh the punk, who finally found her people, among those Slits she had already met during a tour with her stepfather and who would soon become flatmates and fellow travellers, with whom she could breathe in and savour new stimuli, new approaches to artistic creation, to gender, to her own subjectivity.
Neneh the captain, who would find her vocal and creative maturity alongside legendary figures (did someone say Poly Styrene?) and would lend her explosive talent to some of the most subversive projects of the early Eighties, transcending every limitation of genre and context (the vitriolic punk-funk of Rip Rig + Panic deserves more than a passing listen, and the same goes for the full-blooded dub of New Age Steppers).
Neneh the tireless one, who rode the whole of the quintessentially synthetic decade in pursuit of the most electrifying new developments from both sides of the Atlantic, devouring them with insatiable curiosity; from hip-hop to deejaying, which she took up collaborating with various pirate radio stations, there was no field that failed to spark her interest, none in which she wasn't right at the front picking up on its next evolution.

Confusion? More than justified: just try to imagine packing a personality like that into the span of a regular full-length, and you'd be forgiven for having convulsions. From several angles, what was achieved with "Raw Like Sushi" (a title that says plenty about its author) borders on the miraculous, condensing into its ten tracks the equivalent of a decade's worth of experiences, experiments, research and affiliations, lived constantly on the front line, even outside the strictly musical sphere. All of it built on pop communication, on fluid melodies, on the distinctiveness of the narrative setting, reflecting a young woman still, yet already carrying an extraordinarily rich store of life experience, perfectly suited to being recast into lyrics. And to think everything could have taken a completely different turn!

Had you been a devotee of that cut-rate pop-hit factory known as Stock Aitken Waterman, you'd have recognised the snappy, gritty rap adorning "Buffalo Stance", since it had originally formed the vocal backbone of the B-side to "Lookin' Good Diving". Performed by Jamie Morgan and Cameron McVey (Cherry's future husband and steady collaborator, with whom she already shared a close bond), the track was remixed, with the rap insert added, by none other than Wild Bunch, whose members carried within them much of the Bristol ferment that was still to come. The single was a notable flop, but its B-side, suitably stripped of its SAW residue, caught the ear of Tim Simenon, better known as Bomb The Bass. Among the few at the time who grasped the potential of sampling in production, it was he who proposed to Cherry, already at work on her album, a reworking of the single. The reconstruction of the track proved providential, perfectly suited to supporting the rise of an incredible urban ferment that was straining to find its space but had yet to find the lever needed to prise open the doors of public opinion. The song, with every element that made it up, landed like a meteorite at exactly the right moment.

If it's undeniable that the Top Of The Pops appearance and the gossip that followed helped spread the song and its energetic author far and wide, "Buffalo Stance" nonetheless rests on merits that would have guaranteed its success regardless, uncorking the bottled-up energy of an urban, dynamic youth straining to be heard, and not just by a niche audience of fans. Assembled as a sequence of blocks that alternate with surgical precision, the track wriggles between freestyle breaks, funk cadences (the sax solo sampled from Miami's "Yellow Chicken"), sharper urban patterns (the scratches lifted from the famous "Buffalo Gals" by Malcolm McLaren, one of the cornerstone moments of early hip-hop) and dynamic house cuts.
It's a pot-pourri that could easily have turned into a mess, but Cherry makes it entirely her own, dropping it into the feverish dimension of a sprawling city setting, captured through her everyday encounters (the gigolo on the lookout for his next hook-up, the rowdy kids, the tough girls from the block) and its inherent hardships, to be faced nonetheless with a proactive spirit, with that Buffalo Stance (named after the collective Cherry and her partner McVey belonged to) becoming a genuine attitude to life, a style to be pursued with just the right amount of swagger. And in her exuberance, able to shift from the most intricate rap to the depth of an old-school soul woman, without denying herself a few playful spoken interludes (in pure cockney accent), the performer captures this bravado with total candour.

The success, needless to say, is remarkable: the dense urban atmosphere captured by the song, combined with its deeply personal, unapologetically female lyrical perspective, catapults the single to number three in the UK and the US, hits number one in her native Sweden and in the Netherlands, and firmly stamps Neneh Cherry's name on the board. Comparisons start flying thick and fast, and so do the enthusiastic reactions, for a performer and songwriter who tears down fences and genre conventions, who redefines the possibilities of pop communication. Circumstances fall into place, allowing her to carry the pregnancy to term and put the finishing touches on the eagerly awaited debut album, the perfectly fitting companion to a single that was, in its own way, decisive.
Released after two further singles, which cemented the oblique nature and sophisticated touch of the Cherry/McVey songwriting duo (more on that later), "Raw Like Sushi" hit the shelves on 5 June 1989 and confirmed all the expectations built up around its explosive author, perfectly at ease living up to what she had already shown.

Captured by the skilled lens of Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Cherry breaks the fourth wall and stares straight ahead, with the poise of a seasoned model (which she indeed had been), proud and combative, yet not without vulnerability and compassion. A single shot, and yet more than enough to sketch out (however roughly) the explosive force of its subject, who pours her whole self, the baggage of an entire lifetime, into a record narrated with the assurance of a seasoned songwriter, of a storyteller able to universalise her own experience without softening her point of view. This quality, combined with the freshness of a production that shines for its eclecticism and its strong aesthetic cohesion, has made "Raw Like Sushi" an album symbolic of that new pop vitality that would later explode outright with the flourishing of "confessional" rappers and R&B performers who would draw valuable lessons from it.

Certainly, a single like "Kisses On The Wind" (her second US top 10), focusing on that precise moment when a young girl crosses into adulthood (with all the uncertainty and fragility that comes with it), is the narrative blueprint that acts like TLC would go on to adopt in portraying a youth far removed from any stereotype. Along the same lines, "Inna City Mamma", with its faint jazz streaks and elegant atmospheric pads, wraps one of the bitterest invective against the Big Apple in a memorable pop melody ("I trusted you and you crushed me to a pulp", she protests, like a betrayed lover), making the disappointment and the sense of abandonment all the more tangible.

And it certainly doesn't end there: staying true to the album's title, Cherry proves sharp-edged, ready to move on from a relationship well past its expiry date, with all the weariness and regret that can bring (the glittering electro/R&B openings, with their Prince-like tone, of "Love Ghetto"), but also caustic, more than willing to call out girls who "steal" other people's boyfriends and the real reasons behind such behaviour ("Heart", almost a kind of preview, with a fresh new jack swing attitude, of the equally venomous "Thief Of Hearts" by Madonna). "The Next Generation", in this sense, tackles the question of parenthood and the responsibilities inherent in the parental role with overwhelming optimism but absolute conviction, calling for the building of a more humane world, one shaped around the children yet to come. The fact that this underlying message gets translated into an exuberant freestyle jam ready to be sweated out on a dancefloor doesn't dilute its communicative power in the least — if anything, it binds the political and the pleasurable together in an unbreakable embrace. Twenty years before the whirlwind denunciations of M.I.A., the blueprint had already been drawn.

It's a portrait that welcomes its own many facets, nurtures and strengthens them, never limiting their potential, in its own way hinting at the scope of a vision that reaches beyond the present and catches glimpses of a future soon to become common knowledge. If it's true, as already mentioned, that Cherry kept a close eye on what was happening around Bristol, soon to become the catalysing hub of the new trip-hop manifesto, what's presented in "Manchild", the album's second single, nonetheless speaks of a revolution on the verge of taking shape, one that picked up on many of the period's underground currents and brought them to the surface, unleashing havoc. A gentle havoc, melancholic in its own way, yet no less incisive for that, in conveying the feel of a future that would make slowing down its banner.
Built together with Robert Del Naja, who in the meantime had founded his own Massive Attack, the track moves over a muffled hip-hop beat, devoid of the effervescence and grit of a "Buffalo Stance", in which liquid ambient textures and eloquent synthetic string touches take up all the space available to them. Over this floating carpet, where chord sequences drift in and out following their own trajectories, Cherry is at first a melancholic soul woman, able to carry the lessons of soul's old greats towards the newer, more nuanced constructs of R&B. It doesn't take long, though, before the urban touch gives way to a captivating run of rhymes in which the ill-grown man of the title doesn't escape his fair share of reproach, not without a trace of compassion behind it. While the track's urban character remains undeniable, the suspended handling of its rhythm (built on breakbeats, globally-tinged cadences, subtle sampled textures), the somewhat dreamlike treatment of the vocal and chorus, and the atmospheric handling of the synthetic backdrop carry the song bodily into the Nineties, foreshadowing the masterpieces of Massive Attack and Tricky.
It's no mistake, then, to consider Neneh Cherry the godmother of the entire Bristol sound.

Futuristic, yet firmly grounded, brave, tenacious, fully aware and proud of her femininity, Neneh Cherry offered up in ten songs a model of artist, performer and songwriter that would be extensively plundered (from Missy Elliott to the aforementioned M.I.A., by way of Estelle, Ms Dynamite and entire generations of UK-made rappers), helping to sow the seeds of a new way of conceiving pop and electronic music. Charming, enterprising, always outside the box (a fact that would soon cost her all her bridges in the United States, eager as it was to squeeze her uniqueness into narrower, more restrictive categories), Cherry would go on to refine and expand the possibilities of her elusive musical language, one that even after a long withdrawal from the scene never stopped vibrating with that same urgent personality.
Even if there have been moments when her art has managed to cut even deeper, what's on display in "Raw Like Sushi", not least for its far-reaching influence and impact, speaks of an importance that, more than thirty years on, remains impossible to deny.

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08/03/2020