First Listen: Estelle, 'Lovers Rock'
Estelle's Lovers Rock — named for the reggae subgenre pioneered in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s — is a homecoming, an homage to her musical forebears and the diaspora that raised her. "To me, it's the truest, Britishest version of me you're probably going to get," she tells NPR Music over the phone. "This is my version of London, you know?"
It was women who "made the genre go," Estelle tells me: women like Janet Kay, Marcia Griffiths and Louisa Mark.
"I was born in the middle of it," Estelle says. "And my dad had a big hand in Louisa Mark's album [Breakout (1981)] ... that kind of set the standard for what lovers rock was like in the U.K."
The genre of lovers rock is a collection of," for example, is about a woman who's tired and not about to let someone waste her time: "I've got no time to live this lie / No, I've got no time to play your silly games."
