The Joni Mitchell of Hip-Hop : Neneh Cherry takes her ‘Stance’ as an imaginative and insightful singer-songwriter

Most pop insiders first heard of singer Neneh Cherry last November when The Face, the trendy English magazine that monitors music and fashion, splashed her photo on its cover, along with a tantalizing caption declaring her “Buffalo Stance” the single of the year.

To make sure key American radio programmers and critics didn’t miss the issue, Virgin Records--which had signed Cherry in this country--mailed more than 300 copies of the magazine and import editions of the zesty, dance-oriented record.

All this early exposure helped make “Buffalo Stance” a favorite in the nation’s hottest dance clubs before the record was officially released in this country in March. The single has since gone into the Top 10 on both the pop and black charts.

Cherry’s debut album--”Raw Like Sushi”--has sold more than 300,000 copies since it was released two months later, and Virgin expects it to pass the 2 million mark by the fall.

This commercial success alone was enough to create a buzz, but there’s an extra reason why Cherry, 25, is shaping up as the find of the year in pop.

On casual listening, most of “Raw Like Sushi”--with its pulsating synthesizer effects and Cherry’s occasional wise-gal vocal swagger--may seem like simply more in the endless, mostly disposable run of dance hits largely inspired by Madonna’s success in the mid-’80s. However, there is a thoughtfulness and substance to much of Cherry’s album that lifts it above the works of such contemporaries as Janet Jackson and Jody Watley.

Think of this newcomer as the Joni Mitchell of hip-hop.

The parallel isn’t exact. Cherry writes about girls in the mall rather than ladies of the canyon, and the colors in her music are more Day-Glo than blue. Her album, too, uses the urban pop sounds of the ‘80s rather than the folk trimmings of the ‘70s. Equally comfortable singing or rapping, she is more likely to work with a drum machine than acoustic guitar and dulcimer.

Like the acclaimed singer-songwriter, however, Cherry brings a sense of imagination and insight into her introspective looks at relationships and sexual stereotypes.

The sly and sassy “Buffalo Stance,” for instance, is in part a warning to young women to be strong enough to resist when someone uses emotional blackmail (as in “prove you love me”) for sexual or other favors. Elsewhere in the album, Cherry looks at urban victims (“Innacity Mamma”) and the challenges of parenthood (“Next Generation”).

About her music, Cherry says: “I know a lot of people think anything having to do with ‘hip-hop’ is just a sound rather than substance, but I would rather be identified with hip-hop than just pop because hip-hop has an edge to it. . . . It’s fresh and a bit more gutsy.

“At the same time, a lot of hip-hop records seem to just be about nonsensical things. A lot of (record makers) seem to be afraid of turning away their audience with too much commentary, but it is turning around a bit. More people seem to be tackling issues. In my own music, I try to put my thoughts into a story with twists and a bit of humor. The idea is to stimulate thought, not to lecture.”

F risky.

On record and in person, Neneh Cherry comes across equal parts playful and ambitious, smart but unpretentious. She doesn’t seem as obsessed with success as the early Madonna, but there is something equally magnetic about her energy and spirit. Where most pop artists tend to view interviews as simply a necessary evil, she seems to work up a sincere enthusiasm.

It was that spirit that first caught the attention of Jeff Ayeroff, the co-managing director of Virgin Records in the United States. He met her at a party in London, shortly after the Los Angeles-based label was launched in 1986. Cherry had been in a band--the funky, experimental Rip Rig and Panic--but she hadn’t yet started a solo career.

Ayeroff, who had worked with Madonna when he was vice president of creative marketing at Warner Bros. Records and thrives on artists with “attitude,” was impressed by Cherry’s personality and spunk.

“Usually when working with new artists, I try to imagine what they’ll look like in a video, what image you can see for them and so forth,” he said recently. “But none of that stuff was an issue with Neneh. You could see that it was all there. It was just a question of what the record would be like.”

Similarly, attitude was what led to Cherry’s joining her first band in London at age 16. Rip Rig and Panic was an eccentric jazz/funk outfit that was a media favorite in the early ‘80s, but which made little commercial impact. Members of the band had met Cherry through her stepfather, American jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, and they felt she would fit in with the group--even though they hadn’t yet heard her sing.

Rip proved to be an ideal training ground for Cherry because the band was a perfect vehicle for her own diverse, somewhat cutting-edge musical tastes--a musical view shaped by her early environment.

Neneh Cherry (the first name is pronounced NA-nah ) was born in Stockholm to a Swedish mother and a West African father. Her father, a musician, soon returned to his native Sierra Leone and her mother, an artist, met and married Don Cherry.

The family divided its time over the next dozen years between Brooklyn and a country home in Sweden, a contrast in life styles that the young Cherry enjoyed. “When we went to Sweden, we were way out in the country . . . the total opposite of New York City. . . . You could go out and run and free yourself completely,” she said, sitting in a chair behind a bungalow at a West Hollywood hotel during a recent business trip here.

“But I also loved going back to the States because the Swedish thing became very insular. I always felt I was sort of struggling to fit in because my younger brother and I were the two only black kids in the school. I’ve always been able to work through that and get people to take me for what I am, but it was sometimes a bit of a burden. Having New York and that culture gave me strength . . . something I could be proud of.”

Cherry’s musical tastes, thanks to her stepfather’s wide-ranging interest in music from around the world, was equally cosmopolitan. She grew up listening to jazz, salsa, various African styles, classical and Indian music. But she also listened to the Top 40.

“The Jackson 5 were probably my first favorites,” she recalled. “I listened to their first record--the one with Diana Ross on the cover with them--25,000 times. I just loved it.”

She also cites Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”--two socially-con scious Motown albums--as important steps in her musical development. And she responded to the spunk of the punk movement.

Though traces of that eclectic background echo through much of Cherry’s album, she never thought about being in a group until she was asked to join Rip Rig and Panic. She was living in London on her own at the time--having moved there after dropping out of school in New York at age 15.

“I don’t feel particularly proud of leaving school. . . . It’s not something that I recommend,” Cherry explains. “But I had reached a stage where I was becoming very passive and very down on things because the teachers at our particular school were not into their jobs and it seemed like I was being suffocated. I’m sure my parents were apprehensive, but they didn’t interfere.”

Cherry, who has never been married, had a daughter (Naima, now 6) by the time Rip Rig and Panic broke up in the mid-’80s, but it didn’t deter her from following the pop life. (A second daughter, Tyson--named after the heavyweight champion--was born earlier this year).

“I was very determined,” she says. “I have always been a survivor. In fact, I think that once I had my daughter, it gave focus to my life. It made me deeper as a person. I was very determined to work and be a good mama and somehow pull it off.”

Survival, indeed, is one of the themes of “Raw Like Sushi.”

The title of the song “Buffalo Stance” shows how Cherry tries to maintain a balance between message and the vitality of pop. Rather than say “stand tough” or “stand strong” against temptation, she thought “Buffalo Stance” gave the impression of strength, but with words that had a playful image, even a dance-floor attitude.

About the song’s message, she added: “All I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to lay down and do things that you don’t want to do to be accepted. I’m saying, stand up and fight for your rights so that you get a bit of respect and then you will really get on.”

While not all the songs are autobiographical, she has learned to be a survivor.

“Sure, I can remember certain struggles where I was almost emotionally blackmailed into doing things that I didn’t want to do . . . whether it was like guys who said, ‘You have to lay down or I’ll never speak to you again’ or all sorts of other demands,” she says. “It’s an especially important message for young girls because they are so vulnerable. There is nothing worse than feeling used and abused.”

Cherry is excited--and a bit amazed--by her rapid rise in the U.S. Despite the success of “Buffalo Stance” in England, she thought it would take months to crack the market here. “I never dreamed we’d be doing this well,” she said. “I mean, think of it: A year ago we were sitting in our back bedroom in London, just recording the demos. It’s wild.”

So instead of a leisurely few days here to map out a conventional debut-album campaign with the Virgin Records staff, Cherry found herself and the record company exploring just how to keep up with all the demand for interviews and live performances.

Cherry seems unusually confident for a pop newcomer, someone who realizes the importance of long-range career over quick return. She is already anxious about the kind of sudden overexposure that can lead to charges of hype. She saw how the press went wild in England, pushed by the critics’ enthusiasm and Cherry’s photogenic qualities into a series of articles and such teasing headlines as “Ma Cherry Amour” and “Cherry Blossom.”

Still, Cherry knows she has to assert some presence here beyond the music itself, so she expects to return here in the fall for a few live shows, but plans to be very selective in terms of exposure in the press and TV.

On the issue of overexposure, Virgin Records’ Jeff Ayeroff says, “That’s a danger we live with all the time in this business. Sometime it’s something the record company generates and sometimes it’s something the media does on its own. The difference is some artists get swallowed by it, but the good artists live through it because they deliver. Neneh delivers.”