BBCNews
4/11/08


Duffy insists that when it comes to soul music, the colour of an artist's skin is irrelevant.
The chart topper has reacted to claims by Estelle, another number one selling artist, that the British music industry is unwilling to market black artists.

Estelle also claimed the music of Duffy and Brit winner Adele is not genuine soul.
But Duffy told Newsbeat:" If the talent and the desire is there, I don't really think it matters what colour you are."

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Estelle - currently enjoying chart success with American Boy - attacked the state of the music industry.

She said: "I'm not mad at 'em - but I'm just wondering, how the hell is there not a single black person in the press singing soul?

"Adele ain't soul. She sounds like she heard some Aretha records once and she's got a deeper voice - that don't mean she's soul.

"They keep trying to tell me in the media what soul music is and I'm like, we know what soul music is."


(Photo: Estelle)

On the subject of how black artists are marketed, Estelle speaks from some experience, having left the UK for America following a brush with success in 2004.

She's since worked with major US artists like Kanye West and John Legend.

But speaking before she performed at London's Royal Albert Hall, Welsh singer Duffy defended British soul, claiming Estelle may not be looking hard enough.

She said: "We don't live in the 1950s any more, we're in a multicultural country.

"So no, I think that's pretty far from the truth, look around and I think you'll see that it [Black Soul] really does exist."

Musical Influences

Duffy admits she's influenced by a wide range of artists.

She said: "I like a lot of obscure stuff. I think the darker and more mysterious and the more unknown something is, the more you can make it your own.

"I like to dig deep into northern soul and Motown and blues. I saw the Rolling Stones film the other night which was mind blowing and I remembered the first thing I really saw of music was The Rolling Stones on a video tape. I was six years old, no one told me they had been around since the 60s, so for all I knew they were current. I remember seeing it and thinking it was the most important thing I'd ever seen. So, they're up there as one of my biggest influences because they married blues and rock and roll."

Duffy's debut album Rockferry spent five weeks at number one in the UK album chart.
Estelle's Shine is a new entry, this week, at number six.

I like Estelle and all, but who made her the authority on soul music?

but she's right....the industry is unwilling to market Black soul singers.

Rhondab said:

Its true, but thats the industry's fault not this chick duffy's fault.
She's bashing this girl, but she's not the bad guy here

I just don't like when people think being apart of a certain race makes them the authority on particular subjects.

I mean Ashanti is black, and Amy Winehouse is white but Amy's last album was 10 times more 'soulful' IMO than anything Ashanti has ever done.

At the end of the day, it should be about music, not race or ethnicity just pure music....but I guess that would be in a perfect world

thekidsgirl said:

Basically.

I trying to read between the lines here. Duffy is suggesting that Estelle thinks that soul music sung by white artists isn't real soul. Is that really what Estelle is saying?

thekidsgirl said:

I agree, but I put even more blame on music buyers. Record companys market a product just like McDonald's and Coke-Cola and if the majority of the public likes blue-eyed soul, that's what they are going to carry on their rosters. Why have a black soul artist who barely sells any albums and isn't easily marketed to white people, when a white soul artist sells twice as much and is more widely accepted by every race? As much as I like him, Justin Timberlake definitely comes to mind right now, even though I personally believe that he truly does appreciate and love soul music.

I don't disagree with Estelle, but I don't 100% agree with her blaming the white soul singers either. Music should be more based off of sound than race anyway. Unfortunately, the only color that really matters in all this is green and that's all that record companys care about when it's all said and done.

thekidsgirl said:

Nah...Estelle's main point was about how the Britich music industry and press champions white blue eyed soul acts and ignores black acts...She's talking about how hard it is for black R&B acts to get a push beyond being a niche act (she speaks from experience...)...And the fact that she had to leave the UK to get a label push speaks volumes...It's easy to shoot the messenger, but the truth is the truth...Saying that Estelle is equating skin color to soul is missing the point...In a mammoth way...
[Edited 4/14/08 17:31pm]

All I'm saying is that with quotes like this:



and this:



Estelle just sounds like she's directing her valid frustrations at the wrong people

thekidsgirl said:

Excerpt from Full original article (Might put homegirl's words in better context...):

Estelle attacks 'blindness to black talent'


With her American career booming and her new single at No 1, Estelle wants the UK music industry to know how they got it wrong. She tells it like it is to Alex Macpherson

Friday March 28, 2008
The Guardian

There was a certain irony in the announcement of the new No 1 single on Sunday. Replacing Duffy's Mercy at the top was American Boy by Estelle. Replacing a song by a singer groomed and promoted as bringing back "proper soul" was one by a singer from Britain's urban scene, one whose definition of soul is rather different from that of the people who have worked hard to make stars of Duffy and her fellow Britsoul junior diva, Adele.

Estelle has followed the rise of the pair, and something has troubled her.
"It's hilarious," she says, speaking at the height of Duffy/Adele media mania a few weeks back. "I'm not mad at 'em - but I'm just wondering, how the hell is there not a single black person in the press singing soul? Adele ain't soul. She sounds like she heard some Aretha records once and she's got a deeper voice - that don't mean she's soul. That don't mean nothing to me in the grand scheme of my life as a black person. As a songwriter, I get what they do. As a black person, I'm like: you're telling ME this is MY music? Fuck that! They keep trying to tell me in the media what soul music is and I'm like, we KNOW what soul music is, stop fucking around with us! You're taking the piss out of every black person in the country! And then they say, 'Oh, don't bring race into it.' We're not stupid, stop it." Having begun sarcastically and dismissively, Estelle's eyes are now blazing, and she smacks her fist into her palm to emphasise her point. "We. Ain't. Blind."

So what is soul music to Estelle? "Music that you feel in your heart and your experience. You can't explain it, it just gets you. It's in the lyrics, the melody, the beat - you can't pull it apart."

The saddest and strangest thing is that had Estelle not left England to settle in New York, she would never have been in a position to displace Duffy at the top of the charts now. Four years ago, she seemed to have the world at her feet: after four years building up a sterling reputation within the UK hip-hop scene, she released her first album, The 18th Day. Its ubiquitous spin-off single, 1980, suggested the crossover to mainstream stardom was seen as inevitable. And then ... nothing. Her then label, V2, simply didn't know how to promote a black woman from London who wanted to take urban music into the mainstream. They couldn't deal with a soul singer who was also an aspirant pop star.

In 2004, says Estelle, V2 "didn't expect 1980 to go where it went - they thought it'd be ground level, like grime, but it went way, way above that. And they just weren't prepared to sell me as a success." She sighs, and rolls her eyes. "'Cos urban music is so underground, right? At this stage, I had John Legend on to produce my second album - and they didn't know what to do? Whatever! I asked if they could let me go. After V2, I went to, like, five record labels here. All the same umms and errrs. So I went to the States - I wasn't brought up to just sit there and moan, 'Oh, they won't give me a chance!' - and they took me to the top man at Atlantic. And immediately, he said: 'Yeah! You're good!'"

The recurrent theme in thinking about the British music industry at the moment is this: record labels are screwed. Dwell for a moment, then, on the business sense that led to an acclaimed artist leaving the UK - in order for her music to be given a fair hearing. Nonetheless, her second album, Shine, suggests Estelle's talent has blossomed overseas. Although it was recorded in the States and features contributions from a raft of big-shot names - as well as Legend and West, it features Swizz Beatz, Will.i.am and Wyclef Jean - there's still plenty of Britain in the newly transatlantic mix. Moving to New York has added a new and irresistible sheen to Estelle's confection of hip-hop, R&B, reggae and soul, but both her light, supple voice, which switches between singing and rapping with confident ease, and her witty, sarcastic lyrics could come from nowhere but London.

That No 1 single, American Boy, is a deliciously breezy house strut about the joys of a blossoming cross-cultural relationship. It began life as a joke, as Estelle and Will.i.am attempted to introduce Legend to the joys of dance music. Anticipating trips to Miami and Los Angeles, Estelle promises in return, "First let's see the West End, I'll show you to my brethren." Although it's about a relationship, it could just as well be about Estelle's experiences with America itself.

"Everything just goes on speed out there, like whoosh! You say you want something - the meeting happens in a week. Over here, it would be a matter of contacting him, then he needs to sit on it for three weeks ... then that lady needs to sit on it for three weeks. You'd never get that there. It wasn't a culture shock, it was easy. I was more like, 'Hallelujah, thank you Jesus, this is what I've been waiting for!' Over here, all you hear is, 'No, no, no, no ...' even when you don't ask anything." She refused to be cowed by anything in the States, either, giving as good as she got: "They kept saying 'bloo-y' [with a glottal stop] this' and 'bloo-y that'," says Estelle, pursing her lips in distaste. "I was like, have you ever heard a British person before? Where do you think I'm from? No one's ever said 'bloo-y' like that."

Her optimism about the States is summed up by the way she talks about her birthday. "We went out for a straight week. Shit was hilarious. The best night was the Thursday, we were in this bar doing shots of Patrón. Now, I'm not a drinker, let me state that now - but my tolerance is building! And the thing was, they weren't measuring the shots. It was like, that ain't a shot, that's a quarter-litre. This much in the glass. And I was like, 'No, no, I have to do more? I can't walk straight already!'" Estelle pauses."I ended up dancing on tables. I'm not even like that!" - and then grins wickedly. "Now I've done it, my kids will never do it. They'll be like, mummy, mummy, please. And I'll just say: 'No! I did that. It was really bad.'"

She has returned to Britain a star, but Estelle doesn't think that means it will all be rosy ahead for her, or other artists like her. She's wary of complaining - "it would sound like I'm hating on everybody and having issues; I don't have issues" - but she wants to point out the music industry's willingness to let young black British musicians' careers fizzle out prematurely. "It's partly the artist not having a strong enough point of view, partly [that] the record labels just don't know where to go," she says. "They're not creative or imaginative. They try to sell everything as 'a version of ...' Let the artist be who the hell they are, and stop putting tags on 'em. Just 'cos one artist is in the same genre as another, it doesn't mean she's the new version of them."

What angers Estelle most, though, is the way that in the UK, issues relating to race are swept under the carpet, especially in music. "Americans have their issues with skin colour, even within the black community, with light and dark skin, it's crazy - but no one's oblivious to it. Here everyone pretends it doesn't happen, it's all bullshit." She cites the way in which Ofcom banned the grime MC Bashy's single Black Boys from TV last year: "What about that song is racist? He says in that song, we're not all killers and murderers. It's racist because he says explicitly 'black boys' in the hook? Fuck off. Bullshit. He's telling the kids they can be more positive - you don't want the kids to be positive now? You want them to keep killing each other? You don't think you can use this song in an ad campaign like Trident [the Metropolitan police campaign against gun crime in London's black communities]? It really is that ignorant. It's 2008, but it feels like 19-fucking-80-something."

Her idea of happiness now, she says, is "going to the park with my cousins and my family and just talking about nothing"; she purses her lips again at the endless parade of "indie bands, like a million of them, I couldn't tell one from the other" she sees on her TV; and jokes about where she would take a US boy in London. "They all wanna see Buckingham Palace, the guards, Trafalgar Square, all that shit, but I'd take him to the ends. Brixton, Holloway Road - show him real London."

But if she were to take that American boy back to her home city, she'd want its inhabitants to look at her a bit differently. Maybe - who knows - a bit more like they have been looking at Duffy or Adele.

"If you think about where I'm from, I'm not supposed to be singing in the first place," she says. "I'm not supposed to be alive right now. We're all supposed to be in jail or killing each other. I refuse to believe that."


-----

And an interesting quote from a magazine editor of a British urban publication that was published a few days concerning Estelle's comments:

Estelle had a breakthrough hit in 2004 with 1980, a gritty, inventive and acclaimed account of her upbringing. "There is a fashion for YWFs - young white females," said Paul McKenzie, editor of the urban music magazine Touch. "They are the ones who are given the money and the time, and most importantly, people are patient with them. Duffy, if she hadn't had this hit, would have been given a second chance, and a third. Estelle wasn't. The people who hold the purse strings are looking at trends rather than talent. If you're not a young white female - in other words if you're black - I can imagine that is incredibly depressing."
[Edited 4/14/08 18:02pm]

Thanks murph for posting the whole article.
I think estelle's comments were taking out of context in the
abbreviated article. Estelle wasn't venting frustration at the
singers but at the media patrol that promote those artists and
ignore her. Estelle was only calling a spade a spade. Sometimes
the truth hurts and offends.

murph said:

From what I understand, Estelle IS on her third (or so) chance, no?

phunkdaddy said:

Indeed...I think it's easy to get lulled into thinking Estelle said some bullshit if you go by the BBC news article on Duffy because it merely reprints a few words...It's a mistake that anyone can make...But personally, I find her (Duffy) comments about it not being the '50s anymore more puzzling than anything Estelle said...Hell, I'll be the first to say that Estelle is not the best act in the world..I like "American Boy," but a few other joints I've heard from her are a little on the fence for my taste...But the truth is the truth...And ol girl is right...

Raze said:

I believe she's on her second official album...But she had to come to America to get a real push...Which was the underlining point of the piece...
[Edited 4/14/08 19:19pm]

thekidsgirl said:

hmmm...the point is they don't promote BLACK SOUL SINGERS. Ashanti isn't a soul singer.

thekidsgirl said:

I think when reading the whole article, this line of your post agrees with what Estelle is saying here: "So what is soul music to Estelle? "Music that you feel in your heart and your experience. You can't explain it, it just gets you. It's in the lyrics, the melody, the beat - you can't pull it apart."

You can feel what Amy is putting down....also Ashanti was piss poor example for you to use as a comparison.

Having said that, there are many black artists that bring the heartache and pain, lay their soul out for you to walk over in spiked-heels and still don't get recognised, so that ole 'blue-eyed' shit does have a bearing - whether it's in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s! and it also has.

btw, this is not a dig at you, just MO

sextonseven said:

Very well spotted! Estelle isn't saying that at all! It's Duffy who is making this an ethnicity thing.

And then the vocal chords. There is no difference between ethnicities as far as vocal chords go. NONE! It's culture, upbringing that makes you use your voice a certain way.

Rhondab said:

Only 2 so-called "Black Singers" are being promoted at all!

Beyonce and Rhianna..

Some of it is because Fergie, Furtado, and Stefani are signing acceptable "Hip-Pop", and it is almost was if they are "black", but they're not.

White children are buying this "Hip Pop" with black producers now..
And it's probably rulling the clubs. The socializing in clubs play a heavey roll in music, and always have.

Still, so-called blacks are responsible for the state of "the soul singer" as much as the industry.

The hip hoppers, the bootleggers, the "at work copiers", "the mp3 sharings"..
"Soul Music isn't even in Gospel anymore". It is more about style, flash, connections, cliques, over substance and talent Just like everyone else..

And black entertainer often turns their backs on their own communities once they make "big dollar$ in the pop-market".

I guess the music industry is saying that white children are buying CDs, and we need them in this age of CD burners.."

It shows in the market..
[Edited 4/15/08 9:26am]

estelle81 said:

Bingo! Its the Elvis syndrome. The "mainstream" likes the music but if given a choice, many would rather see blonde hair and blue eyes or at least pale skin doing it. I resent the public for that but moreso its the fault of the labels. Its never the fault of the artist for doing what they do. Its just unfair that women like "Duffy" and Amy Winehouse get promoted to high hell when artists like Chrisette Michele, Angie Stone, and Conya Doss have to scrape and scrap to get on some liquor company sponsored tour with basically word-of-mouth promotion to rely on for ticket sales. The music industry is RACIST but people like to look away and pretend its something else.

Linn4days said:

I think you missed the whole point of the piece...lol

thekidsgirl said:

She's had a British number 1 single and knows Kanye West.. she is the authority on everything now, its official.

Amy winehouse has soul/is soul? Really?

Stymie said:

I'm sorry Ivy, but yes.....in any case she has more soul in her music than Estelle in her 'American Boy'-song with that lame-ass rap by Kanye West in it.....

BlaqueKnight said:

I love how she came up with a typical responce when one of them gets confronted about the reality of racism "We don't live in the 1950s any more, we're in a multicultural country".

Sho you right, Duffy

Subtle racism is WAAAY more powerful than the known pronounced/obvious racism,,,,but hey, its MORE comfy cozy to turn the other cheek as opposed to point out the issue, which Estelle perfectly did.

No, I ain't mad @ Estelle at all,,,,she knows it will probably cost her for speaking her mind about this issue, but the truth sometimes has an unpleasant smell.
[Edited 4/17/08 3:07am]

Copycat said:

God, not only does Duffy look retarded, she is retarded, judging from her words.

Everything about her is fake.

Estelle didn't need to pick apart Adele and Duffy to make her point. End of.

Estelle says:

As a songwriter, I get what they do. As a black person, I'm like: you're telling ME this is MY music? Fuck that! They keep trying to tell me in the media what soul music is and I'm like, we KNOW what soul music is, stop fucking around with us! You're taking the piss out of every black person in the country!

She needs to take her head out of her arse. She's a walking contraction. She made a minor splash as a rapper, now she claims she knows all about soul too, just because of the colour of here skin. She is clearly using a "we" as in the context that white people can't be telling black people what soul is. By definition, she is saying black people understand, white people don't.

That's just insulting to the likes of Duffy and Adele.

Then the article states:

So what is soul music to Estelle? "Music that you feel in your heart and your experience. You can't explain it, it just gets you. It's in the lyrics, the melody, the beat - you can't pull it apart."

Hang on, now its a feeling instead of something one race knows more about than another?? If its insulting to every black person to be told what this feeling is by "them" (whoever they are), why is it not insulting the other way around?

She's making out that her colour held her back. So if thats the case, why is she at number one? The fact is, apart from the track "1980", her first attempt was shit. "They couldn't deal with me" is an excuse.

I'm sure duffy receives better promotion. Crossover acts always do because labels see the sales potential. Black to white or white to black. But for every one successful Duffy, there are 100 "duffy's" who didn't make it because they sing pop rock. Do you think we will hear them claiming the record labels didn't know how to deal with their colour?

No. They didn't make it bacause most of their material sucked.

She goes on to say:

"Let the artist be who the hell they are, and stop putting tags on 'em. Just 'cos one artist is in the same genre as another, it doesn't mean she's the new version of them."

So why can't she follow her own advice and let Duffy be who she wants to be?


Then she sums herself up:

"If you think about where I'm from, I'm not supposed to be singing in the first place," she says. "I'm not supposed to be alive right now. We're all supposed to be in jail or killing each other. I refuse to believe that."

Shoulder, fucking, chip, big, on. Re-arrange as you see fit. She's spent 5 minutes in America and come back with the usual US style conspiracy theories.


The fact of the matter is, crossover always sells, and when it does, it usually sells bigger than Genre stereotype acts. Thats not racism, thats universal appeal. Prince, George Michael, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah, Amy Winehouse, Justin Timberlake, Lionel Richie.

Duffy gets the attention because she's crossover, simple as that.

abierman said:

I know soul music and it ain't Amy Winehouse. But I do agree Estelle has no soul either.