Ruffneck

New Jersey-based House collective aka The Back Room, Backroom Boys, Backroom Congregation and other variants. Worked from Stardust Recording Studio in Montclair which was also used by Blaze and B.O.P. in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Collaborated extensively with Yavahn aka Joanne Thomas when she was in Jomanda and later as a solo artist; the alias Yavahn is based on her middle name, Yvonne. Their most successful collaboration, Everybody Be Somebody, sampled [m65614], a New York club classic. Yavahn died in October 2003. The collaborations on Soul Groove Records, their own label, were released posthumously.