Buffalo Stance

Buffalo Stance first surfaced in 1986 as a throwaway. It was the B-side of Looking Good Diving, a Stock Aitken Waterman single by the duo Morgan-McVey, and went under the title Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch. Neneh Cherry sang it and wrote the rap, while Jamie Morgan supplied the sung chorus, built on the A-side's rising keyboard hook. According to Morgan, nobody involved heard a hit in it until he ran into the DJ Tim Simenon at The Wag nightclub in London, and Simenon offered to rework it. The title came from Buffalo, a circle of photographers, models, musicians and stylists formed around the fashion stylist Ray Petri, to which Cherry, Morgan and Cameron McVey all belonged. Cherry told The New York Times that a buffalo stance was an attitude you needed to get by, about survival in the inner city rather than fashion. The new version, produced by Simenon and Mark Saunders, nodded to Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Gals and borrowed from Rock Steady Crew and the band Miami. The lyric turns down a money man in favour of real sweetness. Released in November 1988 as her first single, it reached number three in both the UK and the US and number one in Sweden and the Netherlands. Cherry performed it on Top of the Pops seven months pregnant, and when asked whether that was safe, said it was not an illness. With a woman rapping her own verses over scratching and a dance beat, it set a template that critics still count among the best singles of the 1980s.