E stelle

Stylish Brit crafts hip-hop
soul, suffers no fools
Estelle Swaray just can’t understand

the pickup techniques of American men.

But the recently transplanted Londoner

is learning fast. “They talk so much. By

the time they get your number, you

forgot what their name was,” groans the

chic ²⁸-year-old, complaining about the “negging”

tricks picked up in Neil Strauss’ seduction primer,

The Game. “I’ve seen guys do that: ignore the girl

and then insult her! It’s wack! It shows a lack of

character if you can’t be original. If you irritate my

soul like that, I just switch you off.”

Wise guys get their comeuppance with Estelle,

who creates swinging girl-power soul, marked

by virtuosic vocal chops—she’s a deft rapper and

singer. (Think Lauryn Hill. Everyone else is.) She’s

so impressive, in fact, that A-list help—Kanye West,

Mark Ronson, and Cee-Lo Green—have lined up

to chip in on her American debut, Shine, which is

also the first release on John Legend’s Homeschool

Records (a division of Atlantic). The deal was

originally set in motion in 2002, when Estelle

introduced herself to West outside a Roscoe’s House

of Chicken ’n Waffles in Los Angeles; he hooked her

up with Legend in a sequence she admits was her

“total blonde moment.”

“I wanted to meet John Legend, so Kanye took

me to the studio,” she says. “I was talking to this

guy for, like, 20 minutes, and then I asked Kanye, ‘So

where’s John?’ Kanye pointed and said, ‘He’s right

there. You were talking to him.’ I was like, ‘How you

doing? I’m Estelle.’ So embarrassing.”

Legend ended up singing on her debut album,

The 18th Day, which reached No. 35 on the U.K.

charts in 2004 but wasn’t released Stateside. On

Shine, she shares a sweet flirtation with West on

the effervescent, disco-dusted “American Boy,” and

samples ¹⁹⁵⁰s R&B howler Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

on the first single, “Wait a Minute (Just a Touch),”

where she orders a beau to “wrap it up, ’cause I ain’t

carrying your embryo.”

Estelle might sound like she’s done with the

dating game, but she wants to make one thing

clear: She doesn’t hate the opposite sex. “I have so

many songs cursing out men,” she says. “But I was

happy ‘American Boy’ made the album, because

I’m saying men aren’t that bad. Let them breathe!

We still need ’em!”

B Y S TACEY ANDERSON
PHOTOGRAPH BY RUVAN WIJESOORIYA
FAST FACTS

Photographed for

Spin in New York City,

> Legend turned her on to Feist and Jeff Buckley.

February 7, 2008

“I thought I liked Jeff Buckley,” she says, “and then

John helped me realize, no, I love Jeff Buckley.”

> Estelle, whose father is from Grenada and

mother is from Senegal, grew up in West London

with eight siblings.

50 MONTH 2008 WWW.SPIN.COM

ON ES TELLE: D&G DRESS, DOLCEGABBANA. I T; AMERICAN APPAREL TIGH TS, AMERICANAPPAREL. NE T.