FEATURE:
So Here I Come
Neneh Cherry’s Raw Like Sushi at Thirty-Five
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ONE of the greatest and most important…
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Eichner/WireImage/Getty Images
albums of the 1980s was released right at the end of the decade. Neneh Cherry’s astonishing debut album, Raw Like Sushi, was released on 5th June, 1989. Released through Virgin, it is an iconic album from one of music’s true greats. A queen of the industry. Boasting huge songs like Buffalo Stance and Manchild, this is an album that will stand the test of time. It already has. I think it will endure for decades more. As it turns thirty-five soon, I wanted to spend some time with it. I will end with a review from Rolling Stone that was published in 1989. Reaching number two in the U.K., I remember the album when I was a child. I was a bit too young to remember when it first came out. I definitely got to know Raw Like Sushi better in the 1990s. I want to start out with a few features that examine this stunning album. I will start out with this feature from 2023. For those who are new to Neneh Cherry or might not know about her debut album, you get a real understanding of Raw Like Sushi and its significance:
“A rich musical heritage
Neneh Cherry is part of a lineage of music royalty. The daughter of Sierra Leonean drummer Ahmadu Jarr, and step-daughter of jazz legend Don Cherry, her siblings include Eagle-Eye Cherry and Titiyo, both of whom followed Neneh into the charts. She married her regular collaborator Booga Bear, aka Cameron McVey, and her musical offspring include recent pop sensation Mabel.
This rich musical heritage shows through in Cherry’s work, from her initial records with post-punk groups The Slits and Rip Rig + Panic, through sessions with a bewildering array of artists as diverse as Cher, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, The The, Steve Beresford, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Chrissie Hynde, Pulp, Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, Gang Starr, The Notorious BIG, Timo Maas, and Loco Dice. There have been collaborations with Bernard Butler (on her hit “Woman”) and Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour (on their famous duet “7 Seconds”), her Dreem Teem-produced garage hit “Buddy X 99,” and recordings with Scandinavian jazzers The Thing, electronica maverick Four Tet, and Swedish pop legend Robyn.
A career springboard
Cherry’s career springboard, Raw Like Sushi, however, contains some of her best-loved music. She put together the Madonna-esque sass of the go-go influenced rap opener and smash lead single “Buffalo Stance” with Bomb The Bass’ Tim Simenon and Mark Saunders. It’s based on – and successfully commercialized – her appearance with her future husband McVey, the singer Jamie J Morgan and Bristol’s The Wild Bunch on Morgan/McVey’s choppy 1987 B-side “Looking Good Diving With The Wild Bunch.” Single remixes for “Buffalo Stance” included one from American dance legend Arthur Baker, who pushed the Madonna comparison to the max, as well as one from DJ Mushroom of The Wild Bunch (which was then morphing into Massive Attack). Massive Attack clearly learned a lot from Cherry about how to get their ideas across to a wider audience.
Nellee Hooper from Soul II Soul helped his Wild Bunch colleague 3D on the massive, strings-led “Manchild,” 3D writing, and Hooper arranging. Focusing on male immaturities gave an indication of the music to come from 3D, almost a decade ahead of his inward-looking work on Massive Attack’s classic 1998 album Mezzanine, while Cherry channeled New York’s iconic Roxanne Shanté on the rap. “Manchild” is one example of the prescient third-wave feminism that percolates throughout Raw Like Sushi, from the anti-prostitution lines of “Buffalo Stance” onwards. This time the remixes came from Massive Attack themselves (thickening up the bass and sounding like Portishead several years early, with rave stabs limply slurring in musical metaphors), as well as from their collaborators Smith & Mighty.
The uptempo, poppy, multilingual coming-of-age single “Kisses On The Wind” features lively scratching from Mushroom, with remixes coming from Latin dance figureheads David Morales and The Latin Rascals. Low-slung single “Inna City Mamma” follows. Its title is a perfect moniker for Cherry, but the track opens out to reveal the “shattered dreams” of city life, with the city personified as a pimp. “The Next Generation” was produced by Mushroom, and it shows: block-rocking breakbeats, jazzy samples, and scratches underscoring Cherry’s call for the 90s generation to embrace multiculturalism and to raise their children correctly.
Predicting the future
The second half of the album keeps up the diversity. The skittery, feisty love triangle of single “Heart” introduced Cherry’s brother Eagle-Eye to the world (while some editions of the album also feature the rawer demo version of the song). The synth-poppy “Phoney Ladies” pleads for female unity, while the lustful “Outré Risqué Locomotive” is a James Brown-sampling swingbeat piece. School-days tale “So Here I Come” features production from hip-hop stalwart Bryan “Chuck” New, plus turntable work from Mushroom, and some versions of the album finish with “My Bitch,” a two-hander with rapper Gilly G in which he inevitably comes off worse.
Raw Like Sushi predicted work by Cherry collaborators such as Bomb The Bass, Soul II Soul, Massive Attack, Smith & Mighty, Portishead, Groove Armada, and Gorillaz, but, for some reason, isn’t often spoken of in the same breath. It’s time the album was fully re-appreciated, taking its place beside those acts’ most vaunted collections as a progressive modern classic”.
DJ ran a brilliant feature last year. They discussed how Neneh Cherry was a freethinking and extraordinary talent who was also part of this forward-thinking and boundary-pushing music collective. Raw Like Sushi arrived at the end of the 1980s and would help open doors for the Bristol scene of the 1990s. Incredible acts like Massive Attack, Tricly and even Portishead would no doubt have gained energy and inspiration from Neneh Cherry:
“Buffalo Stance,’ which was released in November 1988, has the rare distinction of sounding both perfectly of its time and incredibly unique. The lyrics are a tale of defiance, the ‘Buffalo Stance’ being a pose to protect against "gigolos and moneymen", delivered in a tone of sheer rebellious cheek, while the music is an idiosyncratic mixture of vinyl scratches, a lilting saxophone sample, rave-inspired keyboard lines, and beats that sit somewhere in between hip-hop, house, and freestyle.
Cherry’s next single would be further proof of both her vast songwriting talent and her ability to nurture promising young talent. ‘Manchild’, which was released in May 1989, was the first song Cherry ever sat down to write, using the autochord function on a Casio keyboard to create a chilling tale of male immaturity, underachievement, and busted dreams. Nellee Hooper, then a fledgling producer for Soul II Soul, provided a beat, Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja contributed to the rap, and Cameron McVey helped to shape the song into its ultimate form. (Massive Attack themselves would also contribute a remix to the single release, as would Bristol breakbeat pioneers Smith & Mighty.).
Once again, the song sounded truly distinctive. Sure, there were elements of Soul II Soul, hip-hop, and contemporary R&B to ‘Manchild’, but Cherry’s songwriting was strikingly original, using seven chords in the song’s verse, where most pop songwriters rarely go beyond three (Don Cherry apparently was impressed). The string arrangement, meanwhile, nodded to where Massive Attack would soon go on their own debut album, ‘Blue Lines’. The song’s subject matter and tone were fascinating, too: how many tracks in 1989 dared to make such a devastating critique of male ego? And how many could do it with the beguiling mixture of tenderness and despair that Neneh Cherry evoked, the song’s few moments of major-chord hope quickly subsumed by murky waves of sadness?
‘Raw Like Sushi’, Cherry’s debut album, was released in June 1989 with ‘Manchild’ high in the UK charts. Again, Cherry had assembled a crack team: production came from McVey, Jonny Dollar (who would later work extensively with Massive Attack), and Mark Saunders, a key collaborator on Tricky’s ‘Maxinquaye’. Nellee Hooper provided arrangements; Tim Simenon brought beats; and Mushroom, from Massive Attack, contributed scratches and programming, making the record a virtual who’s who of 1980s UK street soul.
If you want to know where the Bristol scene that would go on to rule the ’90s started, ‘Raw Like Sushi’ is key, with the record helping to nurture some of the maverick talents that would later make Bristol one of the world’s most vibrant music cities, some two years before Massive Attack dropped ‘Blue Lines.’ But all this would mean little if the music on ‘Raw Like Sushi’ wasn’t so brilliantly innovative. While the record’s production situates it at the tail-end of the ’80s — absolutely no bad thing, for fans of ’80s R&B, hip-hop, and early house — its free-thinking, globe-trotting attitude makes ‘Raw Like Sushi’ feel like a very modern record.
‘Raw Like Sushi’ is full of many different things: fantastic pop hooks, flavourful vocals, fresh attitude, and exploratory spirit. But the key lies in its liberty. You can’t imagine anyone setting out to make a record like ‘Raw Like Sushi', much less being told to do so; it’s too freewheeling and loose, an expression of musical love that feels in line with the radical cultural mix of Bristol at the time. This was a city where local sound system The Wild Bunch — who counted Massive Attack and Nellee Hooper among its members — were known for mixing punk, R&B, and reggae, while Rip Rig & Panic added jazz skronk to post-punk guitars”.
Cherry and her various collaborators were inspired by American (and Jamaican) musicians. But they didn’t want to recreate the sounds they were hearing. They wanted to re-model them, to make hip-hop, R&B, soul, and house in their own punky image. “Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were really scoring gold and their songs were everywhere back then,” Cherry told Billboard. “They were the kind of producers we were wishing that we could maybe work with one day. But then it was like, in a way, we were also deconstructing that style and making it our own and turning it into something more punk in a way. That’s the beauty of the kind of DIY aspect of rap or jazz or punk. It’s about engineering your own universe and telling your own story.”
And what a story ‘Raw Like Sushi’ would tell: An inspiring, liberating tale of the strength of community and collective music inspiration, driven by a bohemian free thinker, one that would blaze a trail for British music for years to come, a Bristol finishing school for punks, freaks, and beautiful soul weirdos that became a global musical force”.
Before coming to a review for Raw Like Sushi, the BBC interview Neneh Cherry in 2020. The interview was to celebrate and mark a thirtieth anniversary release of Raw Like Sushi. Cherry also gave a track-by-track discussion where she gave thoughts and insights. I have selected a few notable numbers. I would urge anyone who has not heard the album to check it out. In 1989, critics noted how Raw Like Sushi has commercial edges and accessibilities. Yet it came from a singular and unique artist who was doing things in Pop music nobody else was:
“Her second daughter, Tyson, was born eight weeks later, at the same time as Cherry was putting the finishing touches to her debut album, Raw Like Sushi.
Released in June 1989, the record was a vital, energetic blend of street rap and sweet soul, with Cherry addressing topics like urban deprivation, emotional blackmail and the challenges of parenthood.
"Think of this newcomer as the Joni Mitchell of hip-hop," enthused the Chicago Sun-Times in its review.
"That's a bit much, isn't it?" laughs the singer, as she talks to the BBC in 2020.
"I guess I always wanted to write songs that mean something - but at the same time, I wouldn't say I write directly political lyrics. They always end up being about being human."
Those words, combined with Raw Like Sushi's pulsating pop melodies, definitely struck a chord. Raw Like Sushi sold more than 100,000 copies in its first week, went platinum four months later, and Cherry was nominated for best new artist at both the Brits and the Grammy Awards.
To celebrate the album turning 30 (30-and-a-half, to be precise) it's being re-released with two discs of bonus tracks and remixes, and Cherry agreed to share the story of those songs, track-by-track.
"It's going to be an interesting journey because I don't really listen to the album," she remarks. "And when I do, I'm like, 'My God, you sound like a little kid!'"
Buffalo Stance
A Buffalo Stance is "an attitude you have to have in order to get by", Cherry told the New York Times in 1989. "It's not about fashion but about survival in inner cities and elsewhere."
The song started life as the B-side to Jamie Morgan's Looking Good Diving, external, with a rap Cherry composed as she visited her local supermarket.
"I stepped up on the kerb and, as my foot came down, I was like, 'Who's that gigolo on the street?'" says the singer. "And pretty much between going into the store and coming out, I had half of the rap.
"I remember doing the second half, 'The girls with the curls and the padded bras,' back in my house, and we more or less did the song in an afternoon."
Although Morgan's single flopped, Cherry's B-side caught the ear of Bomb The Bass's Tim Simenon, who asked to remix it for her album, adding samples from Miami's Chicken Yellow (for the sax riff) and Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Gals (for the hip-hop scratches).
"It was amazing going into the studio with Tim," says Cherry. "He had such a clear idea of what he wanted to do. He was like, 'I don't want any harmonies, I just want the vibe.'
"And thank God he had the vision because I never would have gone back and considered re-doing [Looking Good Diving]. To us, it was like done, ready, whoop, doop, forgotten about."
Manchild
Cherry's second single was an accusatory but compassionate ballad about a man who has some growing up to do. The haunting lyrics and sumptuous strings, recorded at Abbey Road, signified there was more to the singer than the upbeat party vibes of Buffalo Stance.
"I was on the bus after going to see Matt Johnson from The The," says Cherry (the pair had recorded a duet called Slow Train To Dawn). "And I started singing 'Is it the pain of the drinking or the Sunday sinking feeling?'
"I just had that phrase in my head. Then I went home and found the chords and just totally went off piste."
Cherry attributes the song's unusual chord progression to a Casio keyboard she borrowed from her partner Cameron McVey (credited on the album as Booga Bear).
"It had this little auto-chord accompaniment system," she explains. "Cameron, who's a great musician and a great songwriter, didn't really know how to play, so he was always pulling out and finding strange chord sequences on that [keyboard] when we wrote together.
"And when I sent that song to my stepdad, Don Cherry, who was a jazz musician, he said, 'Damn, there's seven chords in the verse. That's not bad!'"
Inna City Mamma
Inna City Mamma opens with a sample from Stevie Wonder's Living For The City - "New York, just like I pictured it" - which was a direct inspiration for the album's fourth and final single.
"There's a bit in that song where it just goes from telling the story of this young girl, her legs are sturdy, she's growing up in the countryside, to someone getting off a bus and arriving in the city," recalls Cherry. "Then they get thrown in jail and you hear the gate being shut, and a voice goes, 'You've got 10 years'.
"I listened to that track a lot when I was growing up. So it inspired another version of that New York City story, through my own eyes."
It's not a flattering portrait. "I trusted you and you crushed me to a pulp," sings Cherry as the song draws to a close.
"What I was trying to do was portray New York as a lover," she says. "It's an interesting city because after you've been there for a while, you become part of the city and it becomes part of you. Not many places affect you like that. So Inna City Mamma was my way of trying to have a conversation with the actual place."
So Here I Come
A blistering coda, So Here I Come sees Cherry deliver her manifesto, "If you're gonna do it, you got to do it right", before she signs off for good.
But the song also paints a vivid picture of her upbringing, including the crushing disappointment of her first day at school.
"I'll never forget it," she says. "I was so proud of the fact I could read and I wanted to show my teacher, but she just basically ignored me.
"I suppose in her mind she didn't want to treat me different to anyone else in the class but it was heartbreaking.
"I didn't last at school for very long. I'm so thankful my parents had the guts to say, 'This situation isn't right, let's work it out.'
"To have that understanding and that faith is brilliant. And that's why I'm still here”.
I am going to end up with a review from Rolling Stone. Their review from August 1989 makes some interesting observations. I can only imagine what it was like hearing this album when it came out. Even though 1989 is one of the best years ever for music and boasts more than a few classics – from the likes of Madonna, Pixies, De La Soul and Beastie Boys -, there is nothing like Raw Like Sushi:
“Talk about a sign of the times: Earlier in the decade, Neneh Cherry was a peripheral member of the postpunk warriors the Slits, then played anarchic funk with Ríp Rig and Panic. Now, on her solo debut, Cherry reappears as a hip-hop adventurer. Raw Like Sushi is an artsy interpretation of current dance styles that recognizes the music as today's most inventive and self-expressive form while attacking the social attitudes that commonly accompany it. The twenty-four-year-old Cherry has made an album that, intoxicated with rhythms and rhymes, is funny, timely, inventive and thrilling.
"Buffalo Stance," the year's best and boldest hit single, indicates her motives. Opening with a scratch, it proceeds as a vibrant collage of tambourines, synths and raps. But Cherry is no stock B girl; she uses these hip-hop tricks to address the selfish machismo of rap posses and to dispute the gold-chain priorities of boy rappers, as she declares, "No money man could win my love."
Cherry is attracted to hip-hop as an expression of black pride and culture, but, like De La Soul, she seems to regret the music's attendant stupidities – materialist villains reappear in "Phoney Ladies" and "Heart," and in "The Next Generation" she baits crotch grabbers whose greatest pride derives from "the size of your dick."
Cherry's tongue wags but never drags. The album's potency mainly comes from her lyrics, which scramble sharp phrases throughout even a well-worn sexual pun like the orgasm travelogue "So Here I Come."
But don't mistake the kinky submissiveness of "Outre Risque Locomotive" for dance-dolly compliance. She insists on having orgasms and respect. In "Manchild," a spooky, minor-key ballad worthy of Dionne Warwick, Cherry raps in a reference to Otis Redding's "Respect." Cherry manages to pair her maternal concerns ("Inna City Mamma" and "The Next Generation" attack abusive parents and negligent government policies in defense of children) with ultratough raps.
Produced by a shifting team of young musicians, the most established of whom is Tim Simenon of Bomb the Bass, Raw Like Sushi never runs out of tricky beats. Whether incorporating Latin freestyle ("Kisses on the Wind") or go-go percussion ("Inna City Mamma"), the production ensemble eschews the easier option of sampling for its own catchy thump and consistently matches Cherry's bravado with episodic surprises. During the last several years, many musicians have built retirement funds by imitating the musical and sexual paths of Prince and Madonna. Neneh Cherry may be the first newcomer inspired by them who also poses a threat to their preeminence. (RS 558)”.
On 5th June, Raw Like Sushi turns thirty-five. One of the greatest debut albums ever, Neneh Cherry announced herself as one of the most astonishing and original artists of her generation. I loved it when I first heard it and still do not. It is a remarkable album that everyone needs to hear! Ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary, spend some time and listen to it. The astonishing Raw Like Sushi sounds and feels…
LIKE nothing else.