Neneh Cherry's Favourite Albums

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"There were other albums that I discovered first, but there was something about What's Going On, which really penetrated within me. I wasn't that old when it came out, maybe nine or ten. I remember it just being everywhere. I grew up between Sweden and New York, and when that album came out we were living on the Lower East Side in New York. Don, my stepdad, was working on making a soundtrack for this movie called The Holy Mountain, which was made by this very leftfield filmmaker who was based in Mexico. Anyway, we had no money, and there was always this contrast between going from the Swedish countryside to downtown NY, especially in the 70s. It was as deep a contrast as you can get. There was something about the elements of that record, because it was everywhere - it seemed like it was coming out of all the shops and the radio - and in that way it's always run a thread through my life. It's always been a soundtrack, which evokes pictures, very filmic pictures.

I think, in retrospect, that it was tied into the fact that at that time we were always driving up at the weekends to visit family up in Harlem. I remember in particular one journey, going up in the car with my Auntie Betty and my brother Eagle Eye, and it was raining. I was looking out at Harlem, and really perceiving a low, a sense of depression - when I watched that film American Gangster with Denzel Washington, it reminded me of that era, where you'd go to Harlem and most of the people were strung out. I think sometimes kids pick up on things can't articulate them - you don't necessarily know what it is. Around that same time, my dad was having his own problems with his own re-appearing demons; with drugs and heroin and stuff – and that was something that when it happened, happened in NY. It was in that same era that I discovered that something was wrong with him, when we were there. So, I think the record has always been a very deep and hopeful album, but it's also very melancholic, and it triggers all these things."

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"The Burial album has a very similar effect as What's Going On for me, although of course it landed in my life at a very different time. It has the same effect in that it goes in and it provokes something inside, on a deeper level. I tag it up against Marvin Gaye, because to me, of this era, it's an album that has a similar cinematography to it - a sonic cinematography."

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"I think when crustier hip-hop came along, which I think I got into slightly after The Sugarhill Gang, that probably became more of a trail that I followed. I used to go and see them downtown in NYC, around the time that record was coming out. It was just such a new thing – a totally new sound. They were the sound of NYC - they were everywhere. You know when something is just killing it on the radio and you couldn't get away from it? At that time I was going to clubs more downtown - rather than uptown in NYC - so when they started playing downtown, it really felt like something was happening. Of course, that record really started crossing over and so they started playing all these clubs downtown, where I used to spend my time, and it was just that feeling of being there while something is happening.

I suppose it was almost the first produced hip hop. Obviously it came from the streets: it grew out of people MC-ing on the streets and all that, but Sugarhill Gang was the first 'product' that came out of that environment. It was interesting also because the label was owned by Sylvia Robinson, and the record was produced by her. That was always another thing that I really checked for: the fact that quite a few of those records were produced by her, a woman, which was important to me. No doubt."

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"That record really represents a time and place for me. It's the point at which rap reached another consciousness, and a poetic course. I just found it so uplifting, but that's a very naff word! It was very interesting, because of course with MC-ing, and the actual idea of rap, there's a long, long thread into history there: you just have to look to the Creoles, to Africa, the importance of the spoken word. But a lot of the early MC-ing was "of the self": advertising yourself, working your name, all that. Then something happened with rappers like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. It was like rap took a very conscious step out. That album, People's Instinctive Travels..., is a very musical album, a very accessible album. It's timeless. It still sounds fresh.

I've often rambled on about what I see as a very strong parallel between the punk thing and the hip-hop thing: they may be in different universes but they're of the same tribe of creativity. Therefore in equal doses they've both been so important to me.

I had this conversation with Afrika Baby Bam [founding member of hip-hop trio Jungle Brothers] recently, about how he first started making music. He was grounded at the time, locked in his house - he was like 12 or 13 or something - and he heard Run DMC on the radio. He was like: "SHIT! I can do that! I wanna do that!" He literally spent however long he was grounded for taping things off the radio – he started doing some regenerating thing with cassette players, so consequently he was taping from one cassette player to another, and he made a beat, then was making loops from some things off the radio. When you go and see some perfect, stadium-type gig, and then you experience something that's actually part of who you are and where you come from - for instance, I would go to clubs, but not so much uptown, because instead I was hanging out in Queensbridge Projects - I feel, I know this."

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"I think she's really inspiring, and I love that album so much. I met Robyn around the time that she was 16, when she first became a huge star in Sweden and was doing more of an R&B thing. But she was so there, and her voice is amazing. Then she came along with this album, and I felt: "OK, here is someone really interesting, someone with real character who is going to be around for a long time." Here she is. She has this presence, and I was just really into it – transfixed – and it was a record which went on for a really long time, which it deserves to do. It was great. I shared it with my youngest daughter - she's a really big fan. To me, it's the best pop record - I mean it in the most complimentary way - of its time. I think it really stands out, and will continue to stand out for a long time. There's just something about her that I find very compelling and honest.

Robyn had asked me to do a few things with her and then I wasn't able to, and so we were always saying: "We have to do something at some point." When Blank Project started coming together, she was the only person, other than the people I wrote with, RocketNumberNine and Kieran [Hebden, Four Tet], obviously, who I wanted to collaborate with. Thank God she wanted to.

I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't been able to make Blank Project. I'm not so interested in product: I'm more interested in the process of making something, of trying to get to the things that you dream of to that particular headspace and arrive at some kind of emotional honesty."

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"I'm going to go with Pink as opposed to Beautiful Rewind but in reality I love both the Text albums. Of course, we were fans in my household of Pause, Rounds and Everything Ecstatic but somehow Kieran really became Kieran when he moved onto his own release path, i.e. Text Records. As everyone who studies Four Tet knows, Kieran is very anti-mastering which is a brave move in itself but NOTHING is industry standard behaviour for KH. I was a fan of Fridge because my husband refused to stop playing them and he wore me down. I only really met Kieran properly two years ago but I have had all the Four Tet output on my iTunes and on my record decks for a long time. Pink is such a well rounded set of original ideas. Knowing a little bit more about the man and how he functions and how focused he is, it is easy to see how he pulls this off with such aplomb. His encyclopaedic knowledge of recorded music and his actual musical abilities, combined with his natural groove and audio awareness, blows my mind. Pink showcases all these aspects to full effect. You can dance or just chill in the headphones to the same tracks. The loops are cheeky and the pictures they paint for me in my head are very trippy. I could prattle on and on about Four Tet. He's a don of his trade and I'm honoured to be able to work with him. Check out how he made that loop sit on the 'Nina' track he built for Baby Bam and me… case closed!"

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"I'll say plain and clear, I found my voice via this band and this record. I learnt how to sing with Poly Styrene. I found myself in there somewhere.

I think I'm driven by feeling. I'm not a classically amazing singer, at all and a lot of what drives me is contact and exchange, and the relationship around the work. I think that is where the best things can happen. More and more I feel really conscious of the chemistry - more and more I have an amazing sense of gratitude.

What punk was when it first started to happen around 1977 - that quite short-lived era, which then had to continue and go into other places - was something very much in its time. I think the mentality and the spirit of that, this creative chaos, in which anyone can own it, hold it, do it, and being fearless within it - that's absolutely there in hip-hop and in jazz."

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"Before having to find my own voice, I was given a voice, somehow, in my backbone, by Don and by my mother, because of the life we led together and the way our family was. The Avant-Garde was the only recorded record that he made with John Coltrane – and John Coltrane really was a guru to him, as much as Ornette Coleman or Thelonius Monk was. I know that it was a very important record for Don.

I can't ever be totally specific or sure about the influence these things have had on my life, but I will forever give thanks to my parents, for including my brother and me in it, in the sense that we were allowed to be with them in their lives. It wasn't always an easy journey, but it was real.

If you look at the places where jazz musicians were coming from, when you look back, and still to a certain extent nowadays - of course it's different because we're in an international world – if you look at where my dad and his crew were coming from, they were coming from the streets. A lot of them – not everybody, by any means – came from quite hardcore working-class backgrounds, playing in school bands, playing in marching bands, and then jazz came. It was like a revolution, especially with free jazz. But even so, there was Louis Armstrong, who was the start of this new sound, this new fringe. I think about some of the people who I grew up around, and these were musicians who just lived and breathed music. The voice, the freedom, and the power that they got from the music was what led them into playing more and more. It's that compulsive disorder thing almost, and so the music – all this music - becomes about connections, and surviving, finding your own voice and not letting it drop."

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"Dilla. He changed it all. He paved the way for the true left field eclectic rap music that we feel all around us today. I cannot pick one album, one collaboration that stands above the rest. They are all timeless classics in their own right. The most wonderful thing about Dilla is his true gut instinct. His programming (in the very early days in Detroit, executed on the most basic equipment) and his choices, his taste, which still stands today as being the benchmark for all left of centre street music.

I just read this quote from myself when talking about Dilla a while back: "You CANNOT classify Dilla's work in terms of ring fenced albums or projects as each step he took, each collaboration he entered into felt like the next step to the all encompassing hip-hop heaven." I think I'll stand by that statement."

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"The last few records that I have chosen – Slum Village's Fantastic (Volumes 1 & 2) and Champion Sound - very much belong together. Along with Jaylib, J Dillah and Madlib, to me they are the most inspiring leftfield hip-hop records, and I think I could almost put them next to John Coltrane and The Avant-Garde. It was free, it was deliberate, but there's an incredible world there of knowledge of music, but also playfulness. These are albums I will continue to have in my life."

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"I went through a lot of my rap albums starting with Grandmaster Flash, Pharcyde, Tribe Called Quest, the Beasties, Dr Dre (in particular The Chronic), Gang Starr (my old friends and heroes, RIP Guru), etc, etc, but I landed on this bootleg because it is such a beautiful encapsulation and blending, almost a train crash, if you like, of styles from totally different genres and eras. Danger Mouse's looping and beats are bang on the money, his choices of Beatles tunes immaculate and Jay-Z, as ever raging at his angry best from the street while never seemingly breaking a sweat. For me Jay-Z never really gets the credit he deserves as a street rapper. He made some money and has done some good deals or whatever but dollar for dollar, pound for pound Jay-Z can slug it out with the best of them.

More than this though, this is not a rap album, it's not a Beatles album, it's a wonderful set of sounds to wake up to. It's a joyous yet strangely melancholy record with heaps of melody and messages up the whazoo."

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"Now this is one of those records that I know absolutely nothing about. Obviously Daniel Avery's music has come to my attention over the years and I confess I found it “interesting” but, as I'm not a techno aficionado, I didn't really tune into it as it were. This album came my way as a result of my DJ'ing a bit more of late and I tuned into it then. It's such a simple concept, he's not really doing anything new, maybe a new sound here and there but that's dance music. He does it so damn well and I find myself listening to this album now without my DJ hat on at home and it's seriously grown into a good buddy. I look forward now to revisiting Mr Avery's back catalogue in some of my rare leisure moments."