As Estelle’s signature song revealed: “1980/Year that God made me…’99/Started to make rhymes.” It can be little coincidence that Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation Of…” was released the previous year, for our media-appointed Saviour of British hip-hop is heavily indebted to the artist previously known as L-Boogie.
Tonight is her first full live show, in celebration of the release of her ‘debut’ album “The 18th Day”. As such, it’s perhaps unfair to criticise her leaden backing band and the rubbish, Richard Blackwood-lite MC introducing her set, but such obstacles will surely hamper her transition into the iconoclast the clippings suggest. Indeed, there’s an undeniably amateurish “Phoenix Nights” feel to the whole affair, not helped by the glitzy ‘Estelle’ logo sparkling at the back of the stage like a Ratners window display.
The evening is still a cause for celebration and several of Estelle’s contemporaries join her on stage to add verses to pre-“18th Day” material. Mercury Prize nominee Ty is one, Black Twang another, while fellow female rapper Tempa – a woman so fierce she makes Jentina look like Audrey Hepburn – duets on old track “Domestic Science”.
With several years of slog behind her, Estelle has honed a sassy, likeable, frequently self-deprecating stage persona (albeit one that links songs with clumsily uncool Gina Yashere-style comic banter). Her lyrical delivery is pure Lauryn – tone, timbre, intonation – even if her high street casual tee-and-jeans style is not. Yet only on the singles “1980” and “Free” does her band comes alive and deliver an alchemic backing that, for mere minutes, begins to justify all the hype and validate the comparison.
With a set (and album) bogged down by ballads and pseudo-smooth ’80s soul, it seems the First Lady of Brit-Hop has a little waiting yet to do.
