”It`s about sex, or at least a sexual attitude, surviving, and staying on both feet-and that`s something I`ve always had to do,” explains singer Neneh Cherry.
Cherry (”Yeah, `course it`s my real name, dear,” she giggles in her unlikely but infectious mixture of New Yawk and cockney) is sitting in a swank Hollywood hotel talking about her smash debut single ”Buffalo Stance.” One of the brighter points of the recent ”Slaves of New York” movie and soundtrack, the song is riding high on the Billboard Top 100 chart, and the singer has been hailed as ”an electro cherry bomb, bursting with energy and character” by the normally cynical British music paper, New Music Express.
”People keep telling me it`s a very sexy record, but if it is, it`s not intentional and it`s certainly not one of those awful heavy-breathing numbers,” she points out. ”It`s more to do with attitude and a certain rawness, and if that comes across as sexy-well, that`s okay.”
Exotic (her father is from Sierra Leone, her mother is Swedish) and sultry, the singer also has enjoyed a long Top 10 run with her debut album,
”Raw Like Sushi.” She turns out to be surprisingly and refreshingly modest about her accomplishments.
”Of course you always secretly dream that you`ll be a success, but I honestly never imagined my music would take off like this, especially not with the first single and album,” she says. ”I was determined to keep it close to the ground, and that`s what the `raw` means in `Raw Like Sushi.` I wanted to take some risks and not worry about being at all commercial.”
The result is a striking, sexy and confident blend of rock, hip-hop, rap and dance rhythms, topped off with Cherry`s pile-driver vocals.
Cherry was born in Stockholm in 1964, and as the stepdaughter of jazz trumpeter Don Cherry (”My mum got together with him when I was still a baby”), she spent a peripatetic childhood before eventually landing in London, where she`s been living for nine years.
”It`s unusual having two dads, and you really get to see the world,”
laughs Cherry, who grew up ”all over the world, because my Dad was usually on tour, although I mainly lived in New York. New York-that`s the survival bit. It was a real struggle sometimes, real intense, but it probably made me more resilient. You have to get streetwise or you don`t survive.”
Cherry nearly didn`t.
”I went to one school where the kids just ran wild, almost like gangs, and I started getting into trouble, and I could feel myself going under,” she recalls. ”I knew that if I didn`t get out, I`d be a complete wreck by the time I reached 18, so I quit school when I was 14 and decided to start working instead.”
A year later, after a succession of temporary jobs, Cherry met her real father, a musician from Sierra Leone, for the first time in many years, and joined him on a trip back home to West Africa. The visit changed her life.
”I`d been going through a real rebellious stage and becoming more and more narrow-minded, and this trip opened up a whole new world to me.
”I met all these relatives I didn`t even know I had, and for the first time in my life I began to get a sense of this whole other side of my background. In fact, I went back a second time to Sierre Leone and then also traveled through Ghana and Nigeria and Guinea, just drinking in the sights and sounds.”
Moving to London in 1980, she first emerged as a backup singer for a hard-core punk act, the Slits, before joining such hip combos as Rip Rig & Panic, Float Up PC, and Bomb the Bass, where she hooked up with deejay-producer Tim Simenon and decided to pursue a solo career.
”It`s funny, `cause although I don`t feel particularly English, it probably wouldn`t have all come together for me anywhere else,” she says.
”It`s an incredibly diverse music scene there and just perfect for a mongrel like me.”
This singer with an unorthodox background (”Some days I feel very black and I just want to go dancing; other days I feel very Swedish and I just want to be alone in the woods”) has a lifestyle to match. Unmarried, she recently gave birth to her second daughter, Tyson, who has been traveling with her.
”I wanted a heavyweight name, so I called her after you-know-who,” she says. ”My first daughter, Naima, who`s 7 now, is still at school in London, or she`d be here, too.
”I know some people think that being a mother and a rock `n` roller just don`t go together, but I don`t agree at all. In fact, I think the two complement each other, and being a mother keeps me very down to earth when all the showbiz stuff threatens to get too much.”
For now, however, the singer is enjoying the attention she`s getting and has already set her sights on her next goal, a solo tour of the states in September. ”A hit record`s great,” she allows, ”but nothing can replace a live show. That`s what I`m really looking forward to now, getting out on stage again and working off some of my energy.”
