Top 100 Songs 2010-19: #17

#17
Neneh Cherry and The Thing – “Dream Baby Dream”
The Cherry Thing (2012)

Hip-hop has long had a close and fruitful relationship with jazz, most evidenced by the explosion of popular acts employing jazz samples and instrumentation during the early 90s. So when hip-hop icon Neneh Cherry teamed up with jazz outfit The Thing for 2012’s The Cherry Thing it wasn’t necessarily a groundbreaking fusion, however there’s plenty of interesting elements that set it apart. Cherry makes routine forays into a more traditional singing vocal, The Thing’s backing mixes a minimalist approach with occasional avant-garde stylings, and a number of fascinating genre-crossover covers stand out in the mix. The best of those covers was their rendition of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream”, which eschews the cold precision of the original for a blissful reimagining that brims with warmth.