The Best of 1992: #11

Neneh Cherry
Homebrew

She came, she saw, she recorded, she released: Blew up like Nagasaki.  (Off "Buffalo Stance," the song your little sister knows real well, and also the song that was not on this album.)  Homebrew was the "Neneh's coming back from Lyme disease" album, Homebrew was the "remember my hit single" cuts, Homebrew was the this-is-what-i-learned while working with Massive Attack piece of vinyl.  Needless to say, it didn't sell.  Of course, it did have modest success on college radio (back when that might have meant something, although '92 was, admittedly, near the beginning of the downturn of college radio--and that success was mostly due to Neneh's "Trout" duet with Michael Stipe.)  Homebrew, however, is a lodestone, a foundational record: it's also an experimental album crafted with intelligence by a black female artist that received wide release.  If that's not a definition of "rare" in most people's vocabulary, that's probably because they haven't bought an actual dictionary in a while.  Homebrew, while still stuck firmly in the critically acclaimed bracket of Low Selling Albums 14 years later hasn't aged a day: it's a totally accessible, excellently crafted pop album.  Each song is perfectly realized, full of all the requisite hooks and imagination that evades today's artists in our .mp3 environment: put it simple, this album is perfect.  Saddling it with the unfortunate title of a "trip-hop masterpiece" doesn't do it justice.  Homebrew is the album that people are going to the store looking for every week--except they keep checking in the new release section, which is where Timberlake, Aguilera and Shakira go to hide from the shadow of Neneh Cherry. 

-Tucker Stone, 2006

Comments

[Squidhelmet]

I desire context for this list. I looked back for the intro to top # list defining criteria (maybe even the process). 'Best' is so subjective I want to know the subject.

Half seem 'because popular' and half seem 'because influential'. When does 'still holds up if you can even get ahold of a copy' become merely 'obscure'? Context separates 'Best' from 'my favorite'?

[Factual Opinion Moderator]

We'll deal with context in a 1992 list autopsy after the top five.

[Squidhelmet]

Is that before or after the rap party? (I just wanna know what to wear)