.jpg?width=1200&auto=webp&crop=3%3A2)
Estelle is driving through Fulham when it hits her - a wave of nostalgia so powerful it leaves her laughing, slightly stunned. “This is blowing my mind,” she says over the phone, as she rolls past the streets where she once caught the bus, balancing dreams of stardom with shifts at a supermarket. “I’m having a whole time right now.”
Now based in Los Angeles, Estelle might be thousands of miles away, but west London still lingers in her bones - the voices, the familiar streets, the shopfronts she once walked past daily. This is where her story starts. Born in Hammersmith in 1980, the second of nine children to a Senegalese mother and Grenadian father. She became a standout voice in 2000s British music, weaving hip-hop, reggae, soul and R&B into a sound that was unmistakably hers.
Long before American Boy became a global anthem, she was laying verses on tracks after long shifts at a Marks & Spencer in Camden. The image feels unmistakably British; Harry Styles had his bakery, Ncuti Gatwa worked at Harrods. Estelle had M&S aisle nine.
“Having a job at a supermarket and going to studio, and then next day you're back stocking an aisle is an interesting thing,” she tells the Standard. “I remember just feeling like, in between all of that, of course, there were open mics, I was honing my craft. There [were] various different jobs, but that was one of the ones that kind of set the pace and we moved from there.”
Her breakthrough came in 2001 with a feature on DJ Skitz’s Countryman album, followed by underground collaborations and her 2003 solo debut Excuse Me, which led to a deal with V2 Records. But everything shifted after a bold approach to Kanye West in an LA restaurant. She asked for an intro to her now “good friend” John Legend, who went on to co-produce two tracks on her 2004 debut album The 18th Day.
Her follow-up, Shine, marked her US breakthrough as the first signee to Legend’s label, featuring an all-star lineup, West, Mark Ronson, will.i.am, CeeLo Green and Wyclef Jean. Then came American Boy, which sold 1.8 million copies in the UK, went double platinum in the US, spent four weeks at No.1 and earned her a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration.
.jpg?trim=975%2C0%2C276%2C0)
But with success came the complications of fame, a game Estelle played on her own terms. “I don’t take myself or ‘it’ too serious,” she says. But there are limits. Fame, she admits, eventually made everyday life difficult.
The three-time MOBO winner shares: “I stopped being able to take the bus like with all sincerity... just because it just gets ridiculous, and it's a matter of physical and emotional safety at this point, because people [are] staring at you wondering, ‘is this real?’”
The last time she tried to blend in, she was in New York, taking the subway with a friend. She recalls “I was like, breathing real hard. I was like, ‘Okay, okay.’ And we were slowly surrounded… and [my friend] was like, ‘Yeah, we’re never doing that again.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I can’t. I can’t do that.’”
“People are generally really nice to me, it's still a little nerve wracking to be surrounded in between train stops on a train with people just looking at you with their heads slightly cocked to the side, like, ‘is it you? Why are you on the train?’ and then you just don't know what's going to happen next. It’s a little dangerous, you know, so I kind of stopped doing that.”
Estelle now views her career with perspective, including the early media fixation on a supposed feud with Adele. In the Guardian in 2008, she argued that black soul artists were overlooked while white singers like Adele and Duffy were celebrated as the genre’s future. Over 15 years later, how does she see the way women in music were packaged then — and how much has really changed?
“Honestly, I was doing my thing so hard I wasn't really paying attention until people ask me questions, and then it would be an honest answer… I look at it like 20 years ago, I was probably right about how I felt, and, you know, 20 years later, I'm probably right now how I feel about it all,” she says in response, reiterating that both artists were “great”.
None of us were really that interested... in hating each other
As for the alleged tension with Adele? Estelle is matter of fact. “I think people made more of it than it was,” she says. “I saw her like in maybe 2018, 2019. She came over to me and gave me the biggest hug, like, ‘oh my goodness, how you doing?’ like, and, y’know, ‘I'm so sorry about all of that.’ And I was just like, ‘who cares, y’know?’”
The real issue, Estelle believes, was never between them - it was in the way the industry framed their careers in opposition.
“None of us were really that interested or bothered or really that invested in hating each other,” she explains. “I think [it was] more people who, I guess, profited or made money or made this their credibility in pitting women against each other, pitching a black woman against a white woman. I just think it's stupid. You know, we think it was stupid. I can say we, because neither of us cared.”
Today, she’s hopeful that younger artists are better positioned to navigate the industry’s tired narratives around women in the industry. “I don't get frustrated by it anymore… None of it does [upset my soul] anymore… I think that people are smart and the younger [artists] are smarter and they do better with each other.”
That perspective is also part of what fuels The Estelle Show, her daily Apple Music Hits radio show, where she champions new voices while sharing her own stories with warmth and wit.
Still, she knows the weight of legacy, especially when it involves collaborators who have since become lightning rods. American Boy remains her signature track, but Kanye West, who featured on it, is now one of the most controversial figures in pop culture. West now largely distanced from mainstream platforms has faced widespread backlash over antisemitic remarks, inflammatory statements and erratic public behaviour. So, can the art be separated from the artist?
“For me, it's very much like, there's a lot of my life in my music, so it's a little interesting to try and separate…” she says. “For Kanye, I [haven’t] spoken to him in 17 years. He’s a different human now than he was when we were all moving through music. Same as I am. I’m wildly different to who I was at 28… at 45. Same as John [Legend] is. We're all wildly different. Think of who you were in your 20s to who you are in your 40s. You should be different… So again, my thing is, like, your journey is your journey. I'm on mine. It's beautiful over here. I'm having a good time.”
That sense of calm confidence runs throughout Stay Alta, Estelle’s sixth studio album, seven years in the making and her most creatively expansive yet. Featuring contributions from Channel Tres, D-Nice and Durand Bernarr, it’s a rich, genre-blending portrait of who she is today: grounded, reflective, and unafraid to evolve.
“I think my music is very intertwined in my life,” she says. “So, you're catching snapshots of parts of my life for sure… snapshots of what I've been doing.”
The album explores growth, healing, and self-definition rooted in clarity. Tracks like Fire and Oh I play like personal affirmations, each one shaped by intention, resilience and the freedom to move forward on her own terms. “I've stopped beating myself up for the wins and the losses and just learn to appreciate where I am in that moment,” she says.
However, where she is, quite literally as we speak, is back where it all began: her old west London neighbourhood. Her voice bubbling with recognition and awe, she reflects: “I had a whole life of running through this whole area and like living my life with no cameras and living my life with nobody really bothered about who and where and how and things.”
For someone who’s worn many hats: chart-topper, Grammy-winner, broadcaster, actor, soon-to-be author, Estelle holds it all lightly. No longer caught in the whirlwind, she’s behind the wheel now. Present, proud and in motion.
Stay Alta available to stream now
