Estelle

It’s fitting that the Estelle story begins in a record store, as the singer/rapper has spent her career bounding between styles like a vinyl hunter cruising from section to section.

As an employee at the Deal Real shop in her native London, Estelle Swaray (born in 1980) was at ground zero for the early-2000s Brit-hop uprising that turned MCs like Roots Manuva into UK sensations and eventually inspired her to grab the mic herself.

A 2002 trip to L.A.