The Return Of The Godmother Of Hip Hop Soul

Soul legend Bobby Womack did it with 2012's post-dubstep The Bravest Man In The Universe. Now that original B-girl Neneh Cherry has pulled off a similarly bold transformation, teaming with IDM hero Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden for the cutting-edge electronic-jazz Blank Project – her first solo album in 18 years. Just don't call it a comeback.

Cherry could be hip hop soul's godmother – her 1989 debut Raw Like Sushi foreshadowed Lauryn Hill's segueing between rapping and singing, as well as her streetwise feminism and anti-materialism. The fashion fave caused outrage when, with a visible baby bump, she defiantly performed her major hit Buffalo Stance on Top Of The Pops – years before MIA appeared at the Grammies. 

For urban royalty, Cherry is refreshingly down-to-earth. This morning the singer, recovering from bronchitis, is conducting interviews on the road in Germany – all arranged by her husband and long-term collaborator Cameron "Booga Bear" McVey. He himself is an esteemed producer, among his triumphs All Saints' Never Ever and Sugababes' Overload. Cherry is fatigued but, while most artists would reschedule, she soldiers on. "I haven't been awake for very long," Cherry apologises, "so my mind's a little bit fragmented." She's disbelieving of the buzz surrounding her very personal – and fulfilling – fourth album. "I think I went into a state of denial about what a big thing it was for me, in a way."

Though Cherry is regarded as a British pioneer, she was born in Stockholm to visual artist Monica "Moki" Karlsson and Ahmadu Jah, a Sierra Leonean drummer. Karlsson later married American jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. Theirs was a migratory clan, Cherry raised between Sweden, England and New York (today she's largely based in Stockholm). As a teenager, she accompanied her stepfather on tour with The Slits (!), choosing to settle in London. Cherry revelled in punk – and the emerging hip hop and house scenes. She joined the band Rip Rig + Panic. Cherry then met her (second) husband McVey, who encouraged her to break out. They partnered on Raw…, which blew up on the back of Buffalo Stance (actually masterminded by Tim "Bomb The Bass" Simenon). Raw… also entailed the ambi-soul classic Manchild. Cherry was nominated for a 'Best New Artist' Grammy, losing to Milli Vanilli. 

Cherry and McVey formed a production company, extraordinarily facilitating Massive Attack's Blue Lines. And Cherry's next album, Homebrew, veered off into moody trip hop. (Still, REM's Michael Stipe guested on Trout.) More eclectic again was 1996's Man, encompassing 7 Seconds, a duet with the Senegalese Youssou N'Dour and Cherry's last 'hit'. After Man, she went on hiatus. The mum of three decided to prioritise family. Don had passed away the previous year. 

Recent commentaries have stressed Cherry's extended absence from popdom – to her bemusement. "So much of how you're judged is by your products so, if there's not product out, it's a bit like you don't exist – like, 'Oh, you disappeared!'" In fact, in the intervening years Cherry collaborated with Groove Armada, 1 Giant Leap and Gorillaz. But, more importantly, she pursued side-projects. In 2012 Cherry issued an avant covers album, The Cherry Thing, with Scandinavian nu-jazzers The Thing. "I really got into working and being creative in that way for a while because I needed to grow a little bit – I needed to do it kinda away from myself or maybe [away] from being in the centre." She'd never felt entirely at ease as a vocalist (much less a femcee). Cherry might have reinvented herself as a super-DJ, Boy George-style. (Indeed, she DJed on pirate radio in the early '80s.) Cherry assembled a mix-CD for 2004's Renaissance Presents Pacha Ibiza. "I do DJ sometimes," she laughs. "I don't mix records or stuff – I just basically play tunes, and I just play tunes that I like… I'm a bit scared of the responsibility of, like, Okay, I've gotta fill the fucking dancefloor!" 

Nevertheless, Cherry did abandon an album prior to Blank Project. "I took it in, played it to the guy at my record company – he was like, Yeah, this is pretty good, it's kind of there. [But] I can remember not feeling completely convinced when I was playing it to him. I came away from that meeting wondering what it was – like, why I didn't feel proud playing a body of work. At the end of the day, you should wanna play it to people (laughs). I'd got into a thing where I was over-thinking. I knew how I wanted to feel, but I just couldn't quite access it. It's like I wasn't really there."

In 2009 Cherry lost her mother – and experienced a breakdown. "I was just like in a black hole," she reveals. Yet writing for what became Blank Project, her most ruminative LP, was therapeutic. "I was like, 'Wow, there's suddenly bright colours'." She and McVey initially sat down with Hebden in Oslo, Norway, where her current label, Smalltown Supersound, is headquartered. The couple were both fans of the Brit's post-rock group Fridge – and Cherry dug his "leftfield dance music". He'd remixed The Cherry Thing's take on Suicide's Dream Baby Dream. Cherry wanted Blank Project to be "an electronic record", but not necessarily cut "in your classic studio way," with "cool production tricks and cool beats." She'd find Hebden to be a "very unopposing" producer – and committed. He'd edit, and manipulate, live recordings by Cherry and London musos RocketNumberNine, affiliates of his Text Records, in NY. "I don't think anyone else could have done it!," Cherry enthuses.

The result is a minimalist, albeit raw, LP big on abstract synths and live drums (Cherry has dubbed it "roughneck electronics"). Intriguingly, Blank Project somehow manages to be poetic, jazzy, punk, soulful and techno-ey. If the opener Across The Water is starkly existentialist, then Out Of The Black, a widely-praised and symbolic duet with Swedish electro rebel Robyn, is pure pop bliss. Cherry has known, and admired, the With Every Heartbeat singer since her days as a precocious teen R&B starlet – and surely recognises something of her young self. Says Cherry, "She's so present in what she does."