Surrendering to love, legacy, and embarrassing yearbook quotes with the ever-discreet R&B star.
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She shakes her head.
Ella was a presence, Mr. Shayback, her adviser, tells me.
She was one of the kids who I always thought,How am I going to teach her?
She already seems to get all this.
Fame came quickly thereafter: Mustard discovered her covers on Instagram and signed her in 2015.
Three years later, Ella broke out with the sunny earworm Bood Up.
Its success made her the first British singer to top the American R&B songs chart.
No mic, no management, no label, nothing.
I feel like Im doing something right, Ella says.
I just wanted to step up, Ella says.
Maybe she was destined for this life when she was named after Ella Fitzgerald by her mother.
Ella grew up singing in a South London church where her Jamaican grandmother was a minister.
She joined a generation of teens who grew up on BETs106 & Parkand MTVsMaking the Band.
I was really a Y2K child with my House of Dereon jeans, she says.
I just grasped from everyone that was around me.
Everyone was like, Okay, who is this?
We dont know her.
We havent known her the past four years, Ella recalls.
It was like giving them another piece of me, but then I just disappeared.
But she couldnt get motivated about her assignments.
I was like,I just want to go in my room, shut my door, and sing.
So she did just that in the summer of 2015 and started to upload 15-second clips to Instagram.
I feel like if he came out later, people wouldve understood it way better.
If you use it correctly, its a powerful tool.
But at the same time, the internet is the Wild, Wild West.
Youre never going to win on the internet.
Ella is the opposite of cagey, answering questions in long paragraphs.
I was being very vigilant, she says.
But I think thats just what love is.
Sometimes it doesnt make any sense, and I was just willing to put myself out there.
Did I call at a bad time?
The album-making process was like therapy.
Now she lets her sung words deliver the narrative.
Ella says her only objective now is to keep writing the songs she wants to hear.
Everyone I look up to still makes music to this day.
Theyre still relevant, she says.
I just want to make music.
And I just hope that I never ever get to that point.
