Artist: Estelle

She's signed to John Legend and working with Kanye West, but will Estelle be the one to really, really break the US? The singer-slash-rapper invites Hattie Collins to New York to tell us exactly how, and why, she's about to take over the world... images by Andres Reynaga Hair by Delores Charles @ HBDC Make up by Nikki Bassey Styling by Karen Binns

It's Fashion Week in New York so the city is even more celeb-filled than normal. You can hardly get a frickin' bagel and lox without having to push past Adam Levine or Angelina Jolie. At the shows themselves, the fame-game is even higher. In an abandoned car-park on Manhattan's west side, a number of stars and fashionista's mingle as they wait for the Y-3 catwalk to kick off. Samuel L. Jackson, LL and that chick from American Beauty line the front row. And wait, isn't that another familiar face? Poking out between the A-Listers is someone we all know very well. Autograph hunters may not yet hound her, but from where we're sitting (way up at the back, basically!), it looks like Estelle Swaray is making some serious American moves.

“Yeah,” she grins, when we catch up with her the following evening at midtown Manhattan's slightly more low-key dance, the Belmont Lounge. 'It's going pretty well right now, pretty well.”

In fact, things are going amazingly for the UK's No.1 female rapper-slash-singer-slash-songwriter. Beginning her professional life with low-key releases of Da Heat mixtapes on her own Stellar Ents label, before signing with V2, Estelle has seen Top 10 hits and partied at the BRITs. But while that was all good, it just wasn't enough for the British-born performer of Senegalese and Grenadian heritage. Estelle wanted a whole lot more. So she left her label. Or did she? “I was actually working on my second album when I was supposedly 'dropped,'” she says of the rumour-mongers. “But V2 was cool. I thank them that they let me go without dramas. They just didn't know what to do with me.”

Luckily for her, someone did know what to do; Mr. John Legend signed 'Stelle to his Homeschool label late last year. “I met John through Kanye a few years ago. Through The Wire had just dropped, and I went to the studio in LA to see about working together. I was talking to John for about five minutes before I realised it was him - and I'd been a fan since he was known as John Stevens! Lesson 1;” she adds. “Introduce yourself to everyone when you walk into a room. Don't act like you're too bougie to say hello. But we stayed in touch and basically, a couple of years on, he told me he wanted to sign me.”

Oh, and for those of you on that whole 'f*cking for tracks' vibe - back off! “Everyone thought we must be sleeping together but no. C'mon,” she sighs. “Why would you sign someone on the basis of f*cking them? It's insulting to me cos you lot have seen me put the work in. I'm not even his type, trust me. He's a mentor and a brother, he's family. I have to big John up cos everyone was telling him 'She ain't light-skinned with hair down to her arse, she ain't no model, she's got big teeth, she's anything...' People said some stupid sh*t, but he didn't want to hear it.”

The purely platonic two managed to get Estelle a distribution deal with big-big-big dogs Atlantic Records, meaning Estelle is actually signed in the US, not the UK. To our memory, she's one of the first black British acts - bar Slick Rick - to do that. “All everyone keeps saying to me is 'It's different and you're not apologising for being different. People feel like, I'm fresh. They say 'How you come from London and are showing us how to do it,'” she surmises of her US signing. “But I just do music, I'm just being me; I'm being the person I should have been on (first album) The 18th Day. But I had to grow and go through all that to become this person.”

Second record, Shine explores a lot of Estelle's past, present and even future relationships. There's the Legend-featuring More Than Friends, the Will.i.am produced, Kanye boasting second single American Boy as well as the will crafted jump-off Wait A Minute, out next month. It's an album that is not only beautifully produced, but lyrically too it's on another level. “This is as real as you're going to get Estelle,” insists the 27 year-old. “This is me speaking my mind and not apologising for a single thing. This is me singing the way I sing, rapping the way I rap, writing the way I write.”

Indeed, a la Lauryn (who Clef has compared her to), Estelle drops in rhyming on almost every track, making this an album fans old and new can definitely get with. “If you're real about your life, you need to get this, because I feel we keep giving young people unrealistic ideas of where their lives are going to go. I’m not here to preach to anyone, because I went through so much stuff, relationship-wise and whatever, just to figure out who I was as a woman. But I realised you're meant to go through it, it's normal; no one is superwoman. We need to tell kids to be the best human being you can be, rather than by the age of 23 you have to have it all sorted out. ”

Featuring the production of Swizz Beats, The Leg, Will, Wyclef and Cee Lo, it's not hard to see how serious Atlantic are about getting this right. But far from breezing through studio sessions with superstar sonic-scientists, Estelle made sure she really came correct.

“I put pressure on myself. When I walked into this, I thought 'No one else has done it like this, I better do it right.' I was walking into sessions with all these guys and I didn't have time to be starstruck, I had to make sure my sh*t was dope. I don't have time to enjoy sitting next to will.i.am, this could be the last time, so let me make hits; I'm not here to make no bullsh*t.”

With the album all but ready to drop, now it's just a question of selling the sell. Tours with Amy W and Kanye are lined up on both sides of the Atlantic, and Estelle is determined that it's her time to shine, much, much brighter than before. “I don't want to be someone that just came and went. I want to be where Mary's at - 10 albums deep and still relevant,” she insists. “I don't want to be a British fad or someone that should have done it, but didn't quite. People don't get this kind of chance second time round, not from where I'm from on road, you get one chance and run with it and hope it does well. So I don't have the option of enjoying this sh*t, this is it,” she says seriously. “I'm putting everything into this because this is it.”

Wait A Minute (Just A Touch) is out Nov 19, with the album Shine out next year. MySpace.com/Estelleonline

If I Ruled The World?
I would rather there was awareness on what’s that's happening in Darfur and round the world, and less on whether Britney keeps her kids. No one gives a f*ck. We need to care about people killing each other because they're lighter or darker than each other. Lets sort out that sh*t. It won't solve itself.

Where's your favourite place in the world?
My bed, in my flat, in London. It's the most comfortable place in the world. People come round just to lay down and sleep. My bed is the sh*t. I got a mattress from Ikea, I'm not gonna front - it's amazing.


ESTELLE’S GUIDE TO NEW YORK
What do you miss about the UK?
I miss my Ribena! It's stuff that I wouldn't normally eat at home that I miss, like fish and chips and kebabs. Everything's a big meal here tOo, you can't just run and pick something up. Even at KFC you're gonna get gravy, mashed potatoes, corn and you have to sit down and take 10 years to eat it. Everything's too big, too many choices. I just eat fruit instead.

What's hot here, musically?
It's the same five tracks here and the good stuff doesn't get play. Right now it's Soulja Boy - I know the dance too, which I'm ashamed to admit. Keyshia Cole is doing her thing too. But I don't really listen to the radio too much. I'll listen to the Kinks, Beach Boys, the Arctic Monkeys are dope, Snow Patrol... I don't give a sh*t, I love that stuff.

Where are the party spots?
You know you have to go to the Belmont Lounge! Sunday night is the spot. It's like a back-of-the-ends club at home. They take all the different styles of reggae and play them and it's like being in someone's kitchen but you're in the club in New York. I'm like, give me a Malibu and Coke! Also, Lotus is pretty standard on a Wednesday, it's a pretty good night. Then you have APT on a Thursday. It's broken beat, like Amplified but the people are more hype and they wile out dance. You have house upstairs and people are smoking weed. It's a good spot.
Belmontloungenyc.com
Lotusnewyork.com
APT - 419, W.13th St

Where's good to eat?
There's Union Square Coffee Shop/ Cafeteria, which is open till 4, 5 in the morning. It's a good place to eat when you've been out.
Unionsquarecafe.com

Manicures?
I've just moved to Brooklyn so I go to Jay Nails on Jay Street. Fulton Mall, or Flatbush, standard. The most you'll pay is $30 for everything, in Manhattan it's like $50. Unless you go to Soho Nails, which is like $24.
Jay Nails - 8607 4th Av, Brooklyn
Soho Nails - 458, West Broadway (between Prince and Houston)

Where do you shop till you drop?
Intermix, cos I'm a bougie b*tch! I go to all those places like Tori Burch, around Soho in Spring and Prince Street and then also the west Village for the boutique-y stuff that looks vintage. The east village is pure vintage though. You can get a dress for $5 that someone's mum had hanging in the back of the wardrobe and revamp it. Oh, and Opening Ceremony, just off Broadway, before Canal St, is amazing. They've got Top Shop, Cheap Monday, the best clothes, that place is my sh*t.
Intermixonline.com (98 Prince St)
Opening Ceremony: 35 Howard St (just off Broadway, by Canal)

Now for the important bit...the men?!
Listen, the variety is fantastic! Where have they been all of our lives? The downside is that they got too much game. Before you can even say your second name, they're going to tell you how pretty your eyes are and all that. And they have this dating thing that I'm completely un-down with. You date people and then they might ask you to go 'exclusive' which means they won't date the 40 other girls they've been seeing. It's just a way to have your cake and eat it until they decide what they want. It's bullsh*t.

RWD Magazine

MySpace.com/Estelleonline

---