Neneh Cherry - Buffalo Stance

No money man can win my love

Album: Raw Like Sushi [debut album]
Genre: Pop, Hip House, Rap
Album Release: June 5th 1989
Single Release: November 28th 1988 [lead single]
Length: 5.42
Producer: Bomb the Bass & Mark Saunders
Scratches: DJ Mushroom
Vocalist: Neneh Cherry [age 24]
Label: Virgin Records, Circa

Music Video


Live on Arsenio Hall in 1993


Live at Pitchfork Music Festival in 2014


Morgan McVey - Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch (1986) (Original Version)

Charts, Streams & Sales

Holland (singles): #1
West Germany (singles): #2
Sweden (singles): #1
US (singles): #3
UK (singles): #3 (certified silver)
Spotify: 30,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 42,000,000 +
Paste Magazine Best Songs of 2014: #1

Credits & Gear

Details

• An early version of the song was released in 1986 as the B-side of 'Looking Good Diving' by Morgan McVey. Cameron McVey would marry Neneh Cherry in 1990.
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  The 'buffalo stance' referes to a pose in breakdancing where the dancer crosses his/hers arms across their body. Also, Cameron McVey was a part of a group of fashion models called the Buffalo Collective. Additionally, the song features a sample from Malcolm McLaren - Buffalo Gals (1982).
  

  

  LL Cool J in the buffalo stance
  

  
  
• The song is a genre bending fusion of house, rap and pop that is testament to the multi-cultural Britain of the 80's where different styles of music, fashion and people were mixing in a melting pot to create something new. The track features the lyric "hanging with the Wild Bunch". The Wild Bunch hosted parties in Bristol with the the same multi-cultural ethic and would go on to become Massive Attack. Regardless of any racial or cultural differences the new and interesting genre fusions would bring people into the clubs and provide them with a place where they could get to know one another, feel comfortable and dance until old quarrels seemed unimportant.
  
  Night clubs and youth scenes played an important part in integrating ethnic minorities into the British way of life creating a new Britannia blended from South Asia, the Caribbean and the native whites. Young people, of different backgrounds, would form relationships in such places that dispelled notions of racism and would go on to birth a new multi-cultural Britain. The cultural differences enriched all involved instead of taking something away. When people mixed with one another they saw how they could all dance and enjoy music the same way and over time the differences in skin colour seemed trivial or even beneficial. Britain wouldn't have had ska, calypso or reggae without the Windrush and the children of the Windrush continued this trend into British hip hop, house and, with the likes of Asian Dub Foundation, even a bhangra fusion .
  
  Neneh Cherry's personal life, just like her music, is an unintentional ode to the possibilities of a liberal, multi-cultural Britain. She's a mixed race woman who became interested in music, met a singer, a white man, fell in love and started a family. Her husband, Cameron McVey, is now undoubtedly and probably unintentionally, deeply invested in the politics of black people in Britain because his children are black British. Millions of others had similar experiences. It's natural for people to care more deeply when the issues at hand directly impact their own children. Love, drawing people together to create families, is ultimately the power that will destroy the evil of racism.

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