Big Black's music was influenced by a number of genres and artists. Albini was a fan of punk rock bands including Suicide, the Ramones, the Stooges, and Naked Raygun. When Riley joined the band in 1985 he brought with him a funk background, having worked at a Detroit studio where George Clinton and Sly Stone had recorded. During their career Big Black recorded cover versions of songs from a number of styles including post-punk, new wave, funk, hard rock, synthpop, and R&B; these included Rema-Rema's "Rema-Rema", James Brown's "The Payback", Wire's "Heartbeat", Cheap Trick's "He's a Whore", Kraftwerk's "The Model", and the Mary Jane Girls' "In My House". The sound that Big Black forged for themselves, however, was wholly original: Azerrad remarks that "the band's music — jagged, brutal, loud, and nasty — was original to a downright confrontational degree. Big Black distilled years of post-punk and hardcore down to a sound resembling a singing saw blade mercillesly tearing through sheet metal. No one had made records that sounded so harsh."