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Neneh Mariann Karlsson (; born 10 March 1964), better known as Neneh Cherry, is a Swedish singer, songwriter, rapper, occasional disc jockey, and broadcaster. Her musical career started in London in the early 1980s, where she performed in a number of punk rock and post-punk bands in her youth, including the Slits and Rip Rig + Panic.
Cherry has released six studio albums under her own name. Her first, Raw Like Sushi, was released in 1989 and peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart, thanks in large part to the worldwide hit single "Buffalo Stance". Her second studio album was 1992's Homebrew. Four years later she released Man, with her next studio album, Blank Project, coming in 2014. Her most recent album, The Versions, was released in 2022. In addition to releasing these studio albums, she formed the band cirKus in 2006 and has collaborated with the Thing, releasing an album entitled The Cherry Thing in 2012. Cherry has won two Brit Awards and an MTV Europe Music Award (with Youssou N'Dour). She has also been nominated for a Grammy Award.
Her parents separated soon after her birth and her mother married the American jazz musician Don Cherry, who helped raise Neneh. (1992). 9780851125794, Guinness Publishing. ISBN 9780851125794 She took her stepfather's surname. Her half-brother, musician Eagle-Eye Cherry, was born when she was four. From stepfather Don Cherry's side, she has a stepsister, violinist Jan Cherry, and a stepbrother, jazz musician David Ornette Cherry. Through her father Ahmadu Jah's marriage to Maylen Jah (née Bergström), Cherry is the half-sister of singer Titiyo and record producer Cherno Jah.
In 1970, Cherry's parents, Moki and Don Cherry, bought and converted an old Swedish schoolhouse in rural Tågarp in Landskrona. In the early 1970s, the family moved to the United States, when Don Cherry taught at Dartmouth College. They lived for a time in the Hotel Chelsea, before, in 1977, the family bought a Long Island City warehouse loft above Talking Heads members Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, whom they befriended.
As a child, Cherry's stepfather would have musicians over to jam, while her mother would paint the house and make clothes, costumes, and tapestries. Cherry said she would sing while her stepfather played the piano, and would often wander into neighbours' apartments with her brother to hear them playing music.
Cherry dropped out of school at the age of 14 and moved to London, England in the late 1970s. Aged 15, she met The Slits while joining her stepfather on his tour with them, and moved into a squat in Battersea with bandmember Ari Up. Her first job at Better Badges involved making pin badges and zines. She also helped staple copies of the first issue of I-D magazine.
In London, Cherry joined the punk rock band The Cherries. She moved through several bands, including The Slits, New Age Steppers, Rip Rig + Panic, and Float Up CP. She also DJ'd, playing early rap music on the reggae pirate Dread Broadcasting Corporation, based in West London. Cherry has stated that she found her voice singing along with Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex.
The single "Buffalo Stance" eventually peaked at number 3 in the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100, and number 1 on the US Dance chart. More singles released between 1988 and 1990 included "Manchild", "Kisses on the Wind", "Heart", and "Inna City Mama". She also found success with "I've Got You Under My Skin", a reworking of the Cole Porter song, which appeared on the Red Hot + Blue AIDS fundraising album. The single reached number 25 in the UK. Cherry was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1990 in the Best New Artist category (but lost to Milli Vanilli who eventually had their award revoked). She won a Brit Award in 1990 for Raw Like Sushi.
Cherry caused a press furore when she performed "Buffalo Stance" on Top of the Pops while pregnant (with her second child, Tyson).
"Buddy X" reached number 4 on the Billboard Dance Club Music Charts where it spent a total of 11 weeks. The track also spent some time on Billboard′s Pop Songs Charts as well as the Hot 100 Charts, where it peaked at number 22 during its 8-week run and peaked at number 43 in its 12-week run, respectively.
The music video for "Buddy X" earned Neneh Cherry an MTV VMA nomination at the ceremony in 1993 for the Best Female Video category, alongside Janet Jackson, Annie Lennox, and k.d. lang, with lang winning the moonman.
"Trout" features additional vocals by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe who helped to co-write the track along with Cherry, McVey, and Jonathan Sharp and contains samples of a guitar riff from Steppenwolf as well as drums by John Bonham. With airplay on college radio and increased popularity, "Trout" spent a total of 14 weeks on Billboard′s Alternative rock Charts where it reached number 2.
Homebrew also included the work of Geoff Barrow (on "Somedays"), who later became part of Portishead.
Additional recognition was attributed to remixes of track "Buddy X". First was the 1993 remix by The Notorious BIG, which is considered by some to be "one of the great Biggie rarities in the world." Cherry stated that she and McVey picked up Biggie for the studio where they remained for the session. The song was completed in one take. "Buddy X" found success yet again in the 1999 UK garage remix by Dreem Teem.
"Move with Me" was co-written by Cherry, McVey and Lenny Kravitz.Album booklet.
In France, "7 Seconds" made number one for a record 16 weeks in 1994. The song earned Cherry her second Grammy nomination and an MTV Europe Music Award for Best Song. Remixes, a French remix album of Man songs, was released in 1997.
To promote the album, she toured Europe in February and March 2014. In January 2015, Cherry performed as a solo artist in New York City. Cherry is very connected to New York, as she has visited or lived there off and on since 1966.
To support the album, Cherry toured across North America, Australia and Europe in late 2018 and early 2019.
During a 1 June 2012 interview with Kirsty Lang, broadcast as part of the BBC Radio 4's Front Row daily podcast, Cherry discussed the jazz-inspired album, saying that The Thing were inspired by Cherry's stepfather's work, but that the band makes this inspiration their own. "I think that we're taking it on, to another place. I think that's really important," Cherry said. One of the songs from the album, "Golden Heart", was written by Don Cherry; Christer Bothén, a musician who played with Don Cherry, was invited to play on the album, and brought the song to their attention.
The album includes tracks originally performed by an eclectic mix of artists, including hip-hop artist MF Doom, Martina Topley-Bird Suicide, and The Stooges. Most of the tracks were recorded together live.
In 1987, she was featured on the song "Slow Train to Dawn" by The The, in a duet with Matt Johnson. She also appeared in the music video.
In 2005, she collaborated with Gorillaz on the track "Kids with Guns" from the album Demon Days.
Kate Mossman of The Guardian said Cherry was "a major part of British pop history, at the centre of the 90s trip-hop underground, virtually inventing the weed-infused west London sound that eventually produced Lily Allen." Women in Pop said Cherry was responsible for "some of the greatest, most cutting-edge pop of the late 1980s and 1990s".
Cherry has said she does not really think of herself as a rapper, but as a "singer that does a bit of rapping". Breaking into the U.S. music industry was not a positive experience for Cherry. She said that while "Buffalo Stance" gave her a mainstream crossover moment in the U.S., she found the American music industry stiflingly attached to labels and genre identities.
In early 2004, Cherry presented Neneh Cherry's World of Music, a six-part series broadcast on BBC Radio 2. In April 2007, she presented a six-part cookery show Neneh and Andi – Dish It Up with her friend Andrea Oliver for BBC Two. Neneh and Andi appeared on Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word as part of the amateur brigade.
In November 2013, Cherry contributed to the art project/audio book Ällp written by Lars Yngve. Singer Peps Persson contributed music, while Cherry, Björn Ranelid and a few other celebrities, all with their roots in Sweden's most southern county Scania, recorded the book in Skånska/Scanian dialect (not "standard Swedish", aka Rikssvenska)
In 2016 she starred in ‘’Stockholm, My Love’’ a drama film and musical film. Set in Stockholm, "Stockholm, My Love Review". www.heyuguys.com. "Film Review: Stockholm, My Love". cine-vue.com. it features music by the likes of Benny Andersson from ABBA.Anzanpour, Arman. "Stockholm My Love". www.stockholmmylove.com.Hans, Simran (18 June 2017). "Stockholm My Love review – quiet reflections on the city and the soul" – via The Guardian.Bradshaw, Peter (16 June 2017). "Stockholm, My Love review – a cerebral city-symphony film from Mark Cousins" – via The Guardian.
Cherry, a short documentary about Neneh Cherry, was released by The Face magazine on YouTube on 23 March 2022.
In 2024 Cherry published an autobiography, A Thousand Threads.Neneh Cherry, A Thousand Threads, Fern Press, London, England, 2024, . The book was shortlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction.
In 1986, Cherry met producer and Morgan-McVey member Cameron McVey at Heathrow Airport. Cherry and McVey were en route to Japan as fashion models as part of London designer Ray Petri's Buffalo Posse. Cherry proposed, and the couple married in 1990. Cherry and McVey have two daughters: singers Tyson, born in 1989 (also known as Lolita Moon), and Mabel, born in 1996. The former (who releases singles with her name stylised as TYSON) was the daughter whom Cherry was pregnant with on Top of the Pops in 1988 and is featured in the "Manchild" video, while the latter is the singer who has collaborated on singles with Clean Bandit, Tiësto and Joel Corry.
Cherry and Cameron McVey have a collaborative work relationship: McVey produced and co-wrote Raw Like Sushi. Together they have supported a variety of British acts and they were in the group cirKus together, with Cameron McVey known as Burt Ford and Tyson as Lolita Moon during this time. Cherry has a stepson, Marlon Roudette (former frontman of Mattafix), via McVey's prior relationship with Vonnie Roudette.
The family has a country house near Birmingham and Wolverhampton, apartments in London and Stockholm, plus the family home in the old schoolhouse in Skåne County that she and her half-brother inherited when their mother died in 2009. In 2014, Cherry said she was commuting between London and Stockholm.
On her street style, Cherry cites LL Cool J as an influence, as well as the photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Judy Blame, and designer Ray Petri. Neneh Cherry speaks English and Swedish fluently.
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