Neneh Cherry - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Cherry was born in Stockholm to a Sierra Leonean father, drummer Amahdu Jah, and a Swedish mother, painter and textile artist Monica Karlsson, later known as Moki Cherry. Her stepfather Don Cherry, an American jazz musician, helped raise her since birth and she took his surname. Through her father, she is the half-sister of singer Titiyo and record producer Cherno Jah, and through her mother, she is the half-sister of musician Eagle-Eye Cherry. She has a stepsister, violinist Jan Cherry, and a stepbrother, jazz musician David Ornette Cherry.

During the first years of her life, Cherry lived in a hippie commune just outside the small town of Hässleholm. The family later moved to Pudsey, England, and in the early 1970s, they lived in an apartment on East Ninth Street in New York. At the age of 14, Cherry dropped out of school and moved to London.