Estelle Fanta Swaray is a timeless artist, one whose values might sound alien to some in the music biz today. With musical roots that run deep in the church, two decades ago, Estelle made serious waves, blossoming into success at the top of the UK charts by overcoming its troubled waters and brash cultural oceanfront. Her accolades, influence and infallible impact on music are well-canonised, yet they are still not discussed nearly enough. Estelle has expanded her artistic reach in recent years, becoming a renowned musician as well as the host of her own The Estelle Show on Apple Music. She’s also an acclaimed voice and motion picture actress: best known for portraying Garnet on Cartoon Network’s cult series, Steven Universe, her character is a radiant purple gemstone hero with sunglasses gleaming like an Olympic gold medal.

Before the world was serenaded by the transatlantic vibes of Estelle’s Grammy-winning, Kanye West-assisted hit, “American Boy”, and the lover’s rock rapture of “Come Over” with Sean Paul—both housed on her 2008 album, Shine—we first met Est’elle: the MC. Apostrophe sold separately. Arguably the first pillar to be constructed in Estelle’s dynasty was her 2004 debut album, The 18th Day, which turned 20 at the tail end of last year. The 18th Day is a Woolworths pick’n’mix of UK hip-hop and suave, romantic doo-wop affirmations of self-belief that somersaulted to a respectable #2 on the UK R&B albums chart. While Estelle’s post-2008 career has been well-archived and documented, the same can’t be said for her road to The 18th Day—a paragon of mid-00s Black British music for Gen Z kids and millennials alike.

Taking it back to the year 2000: Estelle, 20, has just finished her double shift at Marks & Spencer, where the majority of her pay cheque is spent on mix-CD-Rs, music tools, and travelling to open-mic events. After a rain-speckled bus ride from work one day, she arrives at a studio to record a verse for famed UK hip-hop producer Skitz’s “Domestic Science”, alongside fellow women rappers Tempa and Wildflower. “It took so many things to get to that one moment,” Estelle tells me over Zoom. “I feel like people act like Skitz just found me, but there was so much leading up to it—so many mixtapes, so many days of making myself visible. As I spat last on the song, I knew my verse had to be great, but also sound like I was supposed to be here! Alongside that, it was a battle just trying to get people to care.”

With “Domestic Science” as a firm fixture on her rap CV, alongside collabs like “Trixstar” with Blak Twang and Joni Rewind’s production on 2002’s “Uptown Top Rankin”, Estelle was forced to grapple with her musical aspirations, her then-job at Marks & Spencer, and the phantom box-pushers trying to cram her sound into one category. The solution? Her style-shuffling mixtape trilogy, Da Heat—the official prelude to her debut album.

“Growing up, I’d listen to pop records by Duran Duran or Simply Red, then I’d listen to garage, house, hip-hop, reggae, dancehall, R&B,” she remembers. “I wanted to focus on who I actually was… I didn’t like ‘the box’ music execs wanted me to be put into. I hated the box. I will admit [Brixton rap collective] The 57th Dynasty and their co-sign helped me out a lot coming up as an MC, but I’ve always tried to showcase a bit of everything in my music.”

Hosted by DJ Smasherelly, the now-hard-to-find Da Heat Pt. 1 is a UK rap variety show, featuring a number of guest spitters, solo Estelle cuts, and the occasional R&B tune. “When I was working on Da Heat Pt. 1, that was my foundation, before the features and collaborations,” Estelle utters. “I had already been creating records, performing songs that people recognised from my mixtapes: I essentially had my own label [Stellarents].”

Swapping nimble paper sleeves for the more armoured, deluxe jewel case, Da Heat Pt. 2 (aka Diamond In The Rough) ramped up Estelle’s artistic prowess, aiming to emulate the self-made rap machismo found on MTV Base at the time. “With Jay-Z and those guys, way back when, they didn’t wait for labels—they built their own platforms, found distributors, and made things happen. That’s what I did,” she says, before lamenting the fickle nature of record labels “teefing” her sound and making it theirs: “I wasn’t waiting around for a label to ‘discover’ me; I had already been shopping my demos, sending my tapes to labels, only to hear chart-topping artists later come out with songs that sounded exactly like mine. But I kept on pushing.”

Da Heat Pt. 3 looped back around to a similar structure found on the first instalment, boasting guest tracks from the likes of singer-songwriter Jamelia and UK rapper Baby Blue. Musically, Estelle’s expanse widened to compensate for her singing chops on tracks like “Over”, where she flirts with the idea of singing over an entire track, tenderly lifting Donny Hathaway’s 1973 classic, “Someday We’ll All Be Free”, for its instrumental backbone. Elsewhere on the project, she calls upon her friend and UKG/R&B legend Kele Le Roc for “Do You Mind”. “With Kele, we all looked up to her. She was a brown girl who looked like us, and she could really sing,” Estelle fondly recounts. “There’s singing, and then there’s singing.”

As with all legendary, near-mythical tales in music history, fried chicken and fate also have their parts to play: “I was a fan of John Legend before I ever met him. I had a song I thought would be perfect for him, called “Hey Girl”. By chance, I met a young Kanye West at a Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles in LA, leading to my connection with John. For my debut album, it was about telling my story. What I loved about the producers I worked with, and everyone involved, was the mutual respect built over years of relationships and knowing how to navigate different scenarios.”

The luminary album opener, “1980”, came to life just as Estelle was on the verge of signing with Virgin Records’ now-defunct imprint, V2. Written in just under an hour, the record acts as a mural of Estelle’s upbringing in West London, to a Senegalese mother and a Grenadian father. It features brazen bars detailing the death of a beloved neighbour, but also her love of pin curls, and the importance of financial literacy. But there was one line that stood out, one that spoke to the importance of Estelle’s presence in the music biz—then and since: “I touched Africa and came back darker/Knowing myself, feeling my roots a little bit harder.”

Estelle’s matter-of-fact storytelling methodology wasn’t packed with lyrical fluff or wild abstractions—it was earnestly pedestrian, yet emotionally potent. “I had a lot of fun, but during this era, I had an A&R tell me: ‘You don’t write. You’re not capable,’” she says. “I was taken aback. I’d call my producers to confirm what I actually do. Sometimes, it would only take me 20 minutes to write a track like ‘Free’. Bearing in mind, when the A&R said this to me, it was already in the Top 20 UK singles chart.”

Inspired by Megaman and So Solid Crew when it came to rhyming, Estelle also loved the riffs and runs of US groups like SWV and Jodeci, whose soulful threads reared their heads on tracks like “Dance With Me”—one of Estelle’s personal favourites. “I wrote ‘Dance With Me’ with my sister [former artist H-Boogie], and it ended up being the first dance at my mum and dad’s wedding.” Estelle added: “That song was so special to me. I remember writing and singing it together—it just felt like a warm hug, a good vibe. We were in the studio feeling it, and it came out like we’d always dreamed. I wrote a lot of The 18th Day with my sister. But ‘Dance with Me’ has grown with me the most, reminding me to take my time and stay in the moment. Every record should feel like that, and I’ve stuck to that philosophy ever since.”

Bringing things back to Da Heat that ignited The 18th Day, it’s poetic that the now Stateside-based star once rapped about having never seen the palm trees of LA (“Feelin”), only to later find herself living beneath them. This evolution speaks to the unforeseen horizons of Estelle’s career, a journey that transcended her once-limited mindset. “We were in that scene while also being told, ‘Your music has no value. Your music has no clout.’ I just wanted to make sure that, as a Black woman—a young Black woman—people saw that there was a bar they could reach and exceed. We didn’t have to stay at a base level for everything.”

For Estelle, paying it forward has always been a part of her mission, concluding our hour-long conversation by saying: “For The 18th Day, I intentionally made sure that my music and image reflected 100% of who I truly am. Visually and stylistically, it was important that every single Black girl, every single young woman who had been told, ‘Stay in that corner. Don’t hype yourself up. Don’t look cute. Don’t do your hair. Don’t wear makeup; it’s not worth it’—for me, it was important that they felt seen and heard with this album.”

Estelle’s new EP, New Direction, is out right now.