Estelle – American Boy
2008 · Directed by Syndrome
2.9M Likes
Best comments
1.“Why is nobody talking about John Legend? He just appears like a Pokémon.”
More comments
- 2.“11 years and I never noticed her shadow was doing a whole different dance than her.”
- 3.“I will never get over the fact that they cut Kanye's parts out when they play this song at the grocery store I work at.”
The story
Estelle wrote this one in Miami with John Legend, starting from a conversation about the American guys she'd been seeing at the beach. will.i.am produced it, and the minute Estelle heard the beat she said it sounded like London. He wasn't sure it suited her. It did. Kanye West took about a year to say yes, showed up fresh off a London trip with the slang already in his mouth, and freestyled his verse line by line. They kept that first take with barely any editing.
For the video, the director wanted disco lights. Estelle said no. She wanted it clean, sexy and magazine-like, in black and white with shadows, all about fashion and the men in the song. Syndrome directed, and the clip is wall-to-wall famous faces: Kanye and John Legend, plus T.I., LL Cool J, Danger Mouse, Kardinal Offishall, Ryan Leslie and more. What mattered most to Estelle was a Black woman in high fashion with her face fully seen, not tucked away in the dark.
The song spent four weeks at number one in the UK, reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, won Best Single at the 2008 MOBO Awards and took the Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration in 2009. A British crush on American boys, and both countries crushed right back.
