No Nonsense: Singer Estelle climbing the charts with her brash style

Her name is Estelle Swaray (though she just goes by Estelle), a steadily rising British soul singer/reggae-steeped rapper who'd just as soon bite your tongue before she bites hers.
"I just have a way about me where people know that they don't tell me what to do, they kind of just wait for me to do it," she chuckles. "It's like, 'Don't hem at me. I won't do it. You're wasting your time.'
"It was fun coming over here for the first six months, because I got a lot of, 'Oh, I think you should do this,' and I'm like, 'I think you should get out,' " she continues. "I'd say it in the same tone of voice, and they'd be completely like, 'Did she just tell me to leave?' 'Yeah, I did. Go. Now.' I'm very much myself. People get it now."
If they do, it's likely due to Estelle's brassy breakout hit, "American Boy."
"I like the way he's speaking, his confidence is peaking," she purrs over throbbing chunks of disco keys and a slinky, high-stepping bass line. "Don't like his baggy jeans, but I might like what's underneath them."
Much to Estelle's surprise, the song became a smash Stateside -- she'd already scored numerous hits and become a star in her native England -- topping the charts this past summer.
"I was like, 'Are you serious?' " she gasps, her voice as animated as a cartoon character. " 'Cause we wrote that song as a joke. If you listen to stuff like, 'Don't like his baggy jeans, but I might like what's underneath them,' I was not serious on that song. I'm like, 'If my mom hears this, she's going to cuss me out.' "
Be that as it may, the single, which also featured Kanye West, recently earned Estelle a pair of Grammy nominations for "Song of the Year" and "Best Rap/Sung Collaboration."
"It was fantastic," Estelle says of the Grammy nods. "I was in Vienna, on my way back to Miami, it was like 5 in the morning, and I just had the biggest smile on my face.
"This is amazing," she adds. "Going to the VMAs (MTV's Video Music Awards) and not being nominated for anything, and then Britney Spears wins, like, two awards, we're all like, 'What did she put out?' It was just kind of fantastic to even be nominated, and it shows what the real awards are."
As her words suggest, Estelle is a no-nonsense kind of gal.
On her records, her voice is tough and tensile, a blend of silk and sandpaper set against a shifting backdrop of comely R&B, street-hardened hip-hop and touches of sunbaked reggae.
On her latest disc, "Shine," she plays both seductress and leering, self-assured lioness.
It's all a distillation of a stridently independent persona, which is rooted in Estelle's childhood.
The second of eight children raised in a house where her mother forbade secular music, Estelle was forced to assert herself at a young age.
And 20-some years later, she hasn't let up any.
"I remember being, like, the age of 7 and just always being in control of something or someone, a baby somewhere," she says. "I had lots of cousins and brothers, and we were all taught that's how you are, you know, things don't just run themselves, you have to make them run.
"So, it's not anything that feels strange to me," she continues. "It's kind of like, 'This is what you do.' 'Oh, you don't have a record deal?' You don't sit around waiting for someone to drop it in your lap," she finishes. "You go and get one."