Estelle - 'Wait A Minute (Just A Touch)'
Don't get me wrong, the past was great. I enjoyed it, and I'm sure you did as well. But you know what's better than the past? The present. I know this for a fact, because if the present weren't brilliant we wouldn't all be here now; we'd have gone off to find some other point in time that was better. So the past was great, but it could've been better, and Estelle's take on how to do that: take a jitterbug rhythm and a horn section which could basically have come right out of the twenties, then overlay it with stuttering effect and thoroughly contemporary rap, and you've got the perfect mix of past and present. Smart cookie!
You may remember Estelle from a few years back: she released '1980' and 'Free' in 2004, which were great, then 'Go Gone' in 2005 which was fractionally less good, and then utterly failed to release 'Dance Bitch' from her '18th Day' album despite its unparalleled amazingness, for reasons which I'm sure are best known to her alone.
Then she went off to do some collaborations with the likes of Ben Watt and Faithless (interesting possible fact: rumour has it Groove Armada's 'Song 4 Mutya' was originally written with Estelle in mind, but she was too busy to take it on at the time. Presumably it wasn't called 'Song 4 Mutya' at the time, obviously) and now she's back on her own, with Will.I.Am on production. Not too shabby, is it?
Which is handy, because this song is none too shabby either. As I mentioned above, it starts out with a laid-back and chilled out repetitive refrain, and sort of lulls you into thinking you're going to get a hazy slow jam, and then it all turns around on you as Estelle starts busting out the rap. This contains the line "wrap it up 'cos I ain't carrying your embryo", which is a late contender for lyric of the year as far as I'm concerned. (Yep, even better than Shayne Ward's "I love the way that you look without your make-up/I had a girl before we met but we broke up". Hard to believe, eh?)
Anyway, this is basically an assertation of a woman's control over her own sexuality, which is a pretty good message to be putting out there, I think. It's certainly more convincing in this area than anything the Pussycat Dolls might have had to say lately. The whole musical approach to the song is not entirely dissimilar to the sound of Christina Aguilera's 'Back to Basics' album in its retro chic, but where they part ways is that Xtina by and large went for the obvious, pastiche-y approach and rooted herself in that, whereas Estelle has simply drawn the influence from an earlier era and used it as background for a song that would've easily stood up on its own regardless.
It adds up to a very pleasing and layered whole, leaving me rather pleased to have Estelle back. Now, about that unreleased track from your last album, Ms Swaray...
Download: Out now
CD Released: November 19th
(Steve Perkins)
Comments
You're right wrap it up 'cos I ain't carrying your embryo", is classic.
I quite like it. IMO not as great as 1980 but it's great tune.
agreed, not as good as 1980 (it was the year that god made me too, biased) - but i do like estelle alot. She came and did a track with Mark ronson at his live show last month and that seemed pretty cool. Surely Mark has the midas touch for a hit at the moment?
She certainly looks more glam now anyways. oh and i loved the faithless track.
go estelle!