Cherry 2000.
Pro-choice, pro-funk, down with family values, Neneh
Cherry is the female pop star of the future
by Sylvia Patterson
Neneh Cherry is in my bed. So is her husband, Cameron
McVey. So am I, just. Cameron is not a small man and
his natural shape is the star fish. Neneh's on her
side, snuggled up to him, compact and soundless.
Before I can mutter "beyond the call of duty", the
two of them unite in the deep, even breathing of what
Neneh calls "baby sleep" total exhaustion.
They're at the tail end of a hectic U.S. promotioanl
tour and this is the New York segment. They've
deserted thier own hotel room for some solace, and my
room, appparently has "the peaceful vibe" missing
from their own, with its "oppressive walls" and a
telephone that never shuts up. But what the hell.
They've brought champagne, and it's not everyday you
get to sleep with a beautiful woman.
By anyone else's standards this behavior would be
highly irregular, but Neneh Cherry was never
ordinary. Born March 10, 1964, in Stockholm, she is
the daughter of a Swedish mother who painted and an
African father who played music. She takes her last
name from her stepfather, jazz trumpeter Don Cherry.
Surrounded by music all her life, Neneh never wanted
to be a pop star. She dropped out of school in Sweden
and came to London at sixteen with her stepdad to
hang out with him on tour. The jazz circles led her
to singing with Rip Rig + Panic, experimental funk
hipsters who were part of the perennial west London
bohemian scene.
Since th 1950s, west London - and Notting Hill Gate,
espcially - has been a melting pot of races and
aspirations, host to immagrant communities from the
West Indies and Africa, moneyed folk living in
enormous terraced houses, and communes of young
hopefulls living on the dole. In the late 1970s,
Notting Hill became a meeting point for punk and
reggae tribes and the home of Rough Trade Records,
which set up shop near Portebell Road. Throughouut
the 80s, the area was home base of a ne-bitnick crowd
who wore white jeans and striped shirts, smoked
spliffs, and listened to Dizzy Gilespie in smokey
cafes.
Notting Hill was also the birth place of Buffalo, a mid-80s fashion phenomenon invented by stylist Ray Petri, a look which was a dispresctfull mix of designer gear, Portebello Market vintage clothes, and raggamuffin, skateboard, and hip-hop culture. Anything that said "Yo".
The Buffalo "attitude" was indorced by the Face and I-D, style magazines that celebrated the West London way of life, everyone, it seemed was a stylist, anna rtist, hairdreser, writer, model or photographer. These same people thought Rip Rig + Panic were very groovy indeed. James Lebon, part of Buffalo set - now a filmmaker and video director for Right Said Fred - thought Neneh was s atr from the very beginning. "She was fucking genius" he says, "She just had it" Lebon also says the cncept that held the 150 strong posse together was they all came form "the ragge tip, in a rub a dub style." It was intercultural, racially mixed and sexy. A lot like Neneh herself. Ray Petri, the architect of the Buffalo style, became Neneh friend and style counselor.
In 19, Neneh celebrated Ptri's vision with her debut single, "Bffalo Stance". Wearing biker shorts, bomber jackets, and huge gold dollar sign medallions, she came accress as an energy dynamo with a love of lie and a big bad attitude that made men lsuful and women proud. She looked gorgeous. She looked pregnant whne she cherrily bounded up and down on British TV's Top of the Posps to promote the song.
By the time Neneh's first album, Raw Like Sushi, an exuberant meging of hio-hop, funk, and melodic pop, was released, British pop music was in a kind of renaissance. 1988 was the last year of the Teen Idol before dance music blew it all apart. Neneh Cherry embodied the new pop star: right look, right sound: right atttitude. She was assetive but unembittered, challenging but unthreatening. She was all about "positive vibes". And if she seemed to be an ephemeral product of those times, she scored three British singlesbecause her songs were strong enough and her personality eveolved enough to add depth to a potentially vacuous singer/lyrcist role.
Ray Petri died from AIDS in the summer of 1989, at the height of Neneh's fame. It was the signal for the end of Buffalo culture, and the gang dissipated. In 1990 Neneh recorded an eerie reworking of Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" for the Red Hot & Blue benefit LP and then dissapeared completely. She went away to build on her other life as home-loving wife and mother, "the life that keeps me sane." She'd just gotten married, had a new baby, and wanted to "chill'out"after Raw Like Sushi's success. It was also a break to establish her and Cameron's business: build a studio in their London home, set up an office, think about the next album. They did all that, recorded a new LP, and spent last summer in Sweden. And now they're moving to ... Spain? "Why not?" Neneh asks. "Spain has passion!" The move won't be permanent; their London base is their secirity, the thing that lets them give in to the nomad within.
These days Neneh has lost none of her famous forthright cordiality. Within minutes of meeting we're exchanging tequilla slammer stories. Last time I did slammers I fell asleep naked on a set of plugged in hair crimpers.
"Lasttime I drank tequilla slammers," she counters, "I fell asleep on my child."
Neneh enjoys a drink. Once evry six months she and Cameron get totally out of it. "We'll stay up all night and just enjoy being fucked up. It's a totla release." Luckily she has a natural cut off point: "I have to stay sane for my kids" Besides she and Cameron have seen too any people "lose it, man".
She's just walked into the ludicrously posh Rhiga Royal Hotel in Manhattan in a denim jacket and and skirt and enormous tread heavy black leathe boots. Her arms swing up to her shoulde heightto counterbalance her long, loping strides. Life, it seems, is too short for elegance. Shes just been to the gynacologist: "I haven't had my period for a million years."
Cameron turns up. "So you're not gonna die on me or what?" Neneh screws up her face, says nothing. This apparently, means everything is okay. With them is Judy Blame, thier long ime stylist and "visuals " man. He wears the half scowl o the beleagered, a certain shyness surrounds him, and when he's been drinking he calls everyone "girlfriend". This is e Cherry posee of 92. Daughters,Naima, ten and Tyson, Three and a half, are i Neneh's mum's home in Sweden. "It's too hectic for them here. Things in general," says Neneh, "are much easier this time around."
She much easier as well. For Neneh, her new LP, Homebrew is music about being." Where Raw Like Sushi was assertive. Most of the songs are sung, not rapped; it's more fluid, more yrical, and has nothing to prove. The singe MOney Love centers around a buzzing guitar hook and a diatribe against meonetayrgreed. There are intriguing collaborations: tough guy hp hop numbers ("Sassy" and "I Ain't Gone nder Yet") with Guru and DJ Premiere of Gang Starr, and a duet ("Trout") with REMs Michael Stipe. Neneh wrote a "few stupd lyrics"; Michael took them away and came back with a song about sex education in schools. "Michael is one of those poeple," muses Neneh, "you meet him and you go, "Yes I know you'. I can hold his hand and put my head on his shoulder and go ... bless him. And he has one of those voices that just ... sends me."
There are two ballads on the album that are simply beautiful and reveal a previously unseen slice of the Cherry psyche. One is the celestial "Somedays", based on a Beethoven piano sonata. It's about Sundays and, more specifically, hangovers. The other is "Move With Me", which appeared in the Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World. (In the film itself you hear her album version; the soundtrack album features a dub version with no vocals.) The song is an intmate look at personal and sexual vulnerability.
"When I met Cam I felt really ugly, realy insecure, and he actually made me feel like a woman," Neneh recalls. "I used tofeel like I had to be a pleasure dome. I've always been kind of positively aggressive and people would think , 'Oh she's really ood in bed and she's really sext and dominating' whilst actually it was a cover." Things hace certaily changed; Cameron is surprised that his wife actually managed to get up today. "We were up fucking 'til five o'clock this morning. It was me who had to say, "You've gotta get up at nine! And she was like, I'll be fine". I spot Neneh one day in the hotel wearing a pair of alarming high-heeled spikey black patent leather boots. "They're for sex. Grat for scratching the back. Heh-heh."
Neneh is a proud mother. Proud and paranoid. She fears her younger daughter, Tyson (named for the boxer) is gong to die. It's just a feeling but it won't go away. "When you have kids, all of a sudde you know fear. I do things like phone m family up in a state of complete paranoid lysteria just to say I love them, knowwhatImean? Neneh's had two aortions. One with Cameron, one "in the past". She a pro-choice woman. Pro-life, she says, is "pro-fascist" You can commit a bigger crime giving birth to a child when you ain't ready. You've got to have the right to make that decision."
Cameron and Neneh met at an airport in 1984. She didn't fancy him much, but they talked. Theywere oth newly divorved and wary of new relationships. Neneh had Naima from her first marriage to Bruce Smith, who drummed in Rip Rig & Panic. Cameron had a son naima's age. For years they said they were just hangin out together. It was she who proposed. "It was me that went 'Oh baby, marry me, marry me ! For us ot wasn't a security thing - if you haven't got the vibe you ain't gonna get what you're missing from marraige."
Marraiges fail, she feels, because people, "stop playing together. You shut down then the mystery wears out." Sex is all important. "Cameron and I are very stimulated by sex and it's fairly blatant. We like to be open with each other." Neneh admits to sexual jealousy but she can cope with it as long as they're both honest. "If he fancies a girl, I want to fucking know, y'know?" she hollers. "Anf if I'm appreciative of who he's fancying, Ican go Yeah! And if hes full of shit I'll go, 'Fuck YOu! She's much nicer, that one over there."
Neneh's just woken up. She's pacing my room with her overalls bib hanging limply around her waist, her red Aididas tank top not completely covering her chest. No makeup. Big bags under her eyes. One sock on. She doesn't look remotely unatrractive. Bastard. "C'mom babes, wake up!" she shakes Cameron's rib cage. He moans dimly.
The other night Cameron was sitting in the hotel bar talking to Neneh's brother Eagle Eye. It was a heavy discussion; Cameron was giving him some dvice about relationships. "I mean, look at me," he's saying, "I married my worst nightmare. She totally wears me out. But you can't help who you fall in love with, can you?"
I'd wondered for days what he meant. Asleep in ed, he takes another fist in the torso from his beloved tormentor and I think I finally know.
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