Once in a great while, a new artist appears out of nowhere with a sound that’s like nothing else around. Nineteen years ago, Neneh Cherry did just that.

Born in Sweden but raised in New York City, Neneh was the stepdaughter of jazz trumpet legend, Don Cherry. She dropped out of school at 14 and headed to London, where she played in punk bands and DJ’d. Later, she joined the Bristol, UK scene that birthed the trip-hop movement, working as an arranger on Massive Attack’s Blue Lines.

Her debut, Raw Like Sushi, released in May 1989, was preceded by fierce first single “Buffalo Stance.” Mixing a hip-hop style with front-and-center synthesizers, it reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100:

Follow-up hit “Kisses On The Wind” made it to #8 after “Buffalo Stance” stood down. The next year, Cherry contributed an AIDS-centric take on “I Got You Under My Skin” to the Red Hot + Blue charity album, which featured modern-day interpretations of Cole Porter classics.

Returning to Sweden, Cherry retreated to the recording studio to craft 1992’s Homebrew, her second disc. Lead single “Money Love” was on InfiniteRepeat™ on my stereo, thanks to some creative sampling of the O’Jays’ “For The Love Of Money” (long before it became tainted as The Apprentice theme song, and unfortunately associated with The Donald):

Another standout track, “Trout,” her song with Michael Stipe of R.E.M. found a welcome home for its sex-education message on modern-rock radio, though “Buddy X” was the mainstream bid. Written as a dig at Lenny Kravitz’s womanizing ways — Cherry had toured with him and witnessed his philandering — “Buddy X” didn’t mark a notable spot on the chart. (But worth noting is that Geoff Barrow of Portishead lent a hand to one Homebrew track, “Somedays.”)

It was another four years before Cherry issued her third (and most recent) album, the import-only Man. If you’ve heard anything from the typically musically-mixed set, it’s likely the haunting “7Seconds,” featuring vocals from Youssou N’Dour (the single sold two million copies worldwide). Since that time, Cherry has kept busy, guesting on albums from Pulp, Gorillaz, Groove Armada, and a handful of others.

In 2006, Cherry and longtime collaborator/husband, Cameron McVey, helped form cirKus. The band’s debut, Laylow isn’t quite my cup of tea (there isn’t as much of pure Cherry as I’d like). But always true to her schizophonic self, she teamed up with N’Dour again for last year’s anthemic “Wake Up Africa,” and describes cirKus’ upcoming second album Medicine as “much more sociable [with a] a ’70s disco feel.”

As for a fourth Neneh Cherry solo disc, it’s been a work-in-progress for a while. And with a cirKus tour scheduled for this summer, Cherry says it won’t likely see the light of day ’til 2009. But nearly two decades later, she’s still looking good in a buffalo stance.