Estelle isn't due on stage for another hour. But in the basement of Zavvi on
Oxford Street in Central London a hundred-odd Estelle fans have already
installed themselves. Upwardly mobile B-boys and young commuters affect a
modicum of detachment - as, indeed one might, when standing beside a gaggle
of teenage girls singing American Boy. Outside by the staff entrance,
however, lurk two middle-aged “fans” who look more like Chas &
Dave's stunt doubles than connoisseurs of precision-tooled British R&B.
They have already met Estelle going in. Now, they are waiting for her to go
back out.
Five floors up, in her makeshift dressing room, the 28-year-old singer ponders
the occupational hazard that is the autograph hunter. “It never ends!” she
exclaims. “They ask you to sign something, so you sign it. Then the next
time, they've had a picture printed out of the time you signed something for
them. And then they want you to sign that. And, at that point, you're like,
‘Hmm. I think I'm over this.'”
In all probability - six months after a long residency at No1 with American
Boy - Estelle Swaray is also “over” singing in record shops. But you
wouldn't know it from the way she parades around the tiny stage, alchemising
a promotional obligation into an event. “I love you,” she says, directing a
lethally manicured hand at the throng, before adding, “But I'll love you
even more if I know you've bought my album.” The album, of course, is Shine
- a record that singlehandedly restored a little self-esteem to the
beleaguered realm of British R&B. After all, if Kanye West went to the
trouble of rapping about Ribena, “London blokes” and WAGS in American Boy,
wasn't it about time that Britain took Estelle to its heart?
And of course, since the release of Shine, Britain has done just that. Had
this been her first flush of success, Estelle's language might be all
“dreams coming true” this and “I can't believe it's all real” that. But
then, even five years ago - when she landed a hit single at the first
attempt - she was hardly a giggling ingénue. The autobiographical,
hip-hop-inflected 1980 sated the nostalgia of older listeners, while also
appealing to those, like her, who were born in that year. We all hoped she
would write more songs as clever as that one - except that when her label V2
let her go, we just as quickly forgot about her.
“When 1980 was a hit,” she recalls, “it just flew way over anything they
thought was possible. Then this new guy came in, from an indie background,
so all his ideas were to do with working with indie bands, like Bloc Party.”
She adopts the look of shock she used at the time. “I was like, ‘What?!' He
wanted me to work with all his folk. The indie folk. That has no bearing on
my future. These people mean nothing to my career!”
So was she dropped or did she walk? The way Estelle tells it, the relationship
with the label deteriorated to the point that she found herself begging to
be released. Had any industry expert bumped into her at the time, he or she
could have told Estelle that her chances of finding another label at that
point, let alone one that shared her plans for Stateside success, were poor.
The pop graveyard is littered with the names of British black female singers
- Shola Ama, Dinah Carroll, Shara Nelson - bumped off record companies that
saw no long-term potential in what they did.
But, as the spry dancehall pop of the Mark Ronson-produced Magnificent points
out, “you gotta put in the work”. Indeed, as the second of nine children
raised by a single mother, Estelle says she was quite used to hard work by
the time she became involved with music. It's all there, of course, the
words to that first hit - “Mum worked late and we learnt to cook/Rice, peas,
chicken and stew pea soup”.
What her Senegalese mother was too busy to teach her in person, she delegated
to her bookshelf. Between the ages of 12 and 16, the soon-to-be pop star
ploughed through all three volumes of J.A. Rogers's epic interracial study
Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro and Indian Miscegenation in the Two
Americas.
“It just seemed like a series of interesting facts to me,” recalls Estelle,
“You realised just how far black people permeated all areas of society.
Like, there were black people in the bloodline of the French royal family,
but history doesn't necessarily tell you all of that.”
It's slightly embarrassing to realise that Estelle is often patronised with a
backstory she doesn't recognise. She rejects the idea that she has been the
victim rather than the author of her own circumstances. In the wake of her
record deal, when her father, a session drummer, walked back into her life,
she says she resisted the urge to be angry with him. “He didn't come asking
for anything,” she says. “He was just like, ‘Hey, if you want to know me,
I'm here ... I know I messed up.'”
The closest she came to victimhood was a brief period of depression three
years ago, after the ending of her last serious relationship (with a man she
won't name). “It got to the point where I think that he perceived my career
was going downhill. Then he got to saying, ‘I want to have a kid.' And I was
like, ‘Well, how are you even going to support that kid?' I grew up in a
huge family, so I know how much effort you put into raising a kid. He did
things which left me, like, ‘On what planet is that acceptable?'”
The relationship might have ended, but not before he inadvertently gifted her
lots of material for what became Shine: No Substitute Love, So Much Out of
the Way and the dancehall pop of Magnificent.
Much has been made of the apparently chance meeting with the nu-soul star John
Legend and his chum Kanye West, which led to her being the first signing to
his Homeschool label. In America, several million-selling artists are given
their own small imprint by a record company eager to keep them happy.
Jonathan Richman, for example, records for Neil Young's Vapor label.
But Estelle is no niche performer. When Legend passed Shine over to his
paymasters, they swiftly moved her into a swanky New York residence. There
was, though, a modicum of controversy when someone claimed that the record
company had effectively sabotaged American Boy's prospects of becoming a big
American hit when it stopped iTunes from selling it separately from the rest
of her album.
It was, says Estelle, a gamble - but one that has paid off. “They did it
because they wanted to draw people's attention to the fact that there was a
whole album where that came from. And it worked ... Now the album's flying.”
And for that reason so is her international career. This visit to her hometown
is almost over. She'll be back briefly for the Mobo Awards, where there's
every chance she will bag most of the five awards she is up for. How does it
feel to be competing against the distinctly paler Duffy and Adele for a
Music of Black Origin award? After all she did say in a past interview, “As
a songwriter, I get what they do. As a black person, I'm like: you're
telling me this is my music? F*** that!”
“Hah! I hate this question,” she laughs and for the most fleeting of moments,
Estelle looks uncomfortable as she gropes around for something diplomatic to
say. Nothing is forthcoming, so, in my best announcer voice, I pretend that
the award actually has gone to Duffy. “You're ... silly,” she says with a
smile. One suspects that, should the unthinkable happen on the night, her
reaction might require a touch more rehearsing.
Mobo Awards 2008, Wembley Arena, Oct 15 (www.mobo.com)
'Stay at the top' you say? The top of what? I've never heard of her!
Phil, Belfast,
great singer again!
meg, london, UK