On the 28th floor of the Atlantic Records office, overlooking the city’s finest vast skyscrapers, the 28-year old “hip-hop/soul star” brings much heat to the numbingly cold city of New York. Estelle began her own record label in the U.K., Stellar Ents, through which she released two self-produced mix tapes. During this time she couldn’t imagine the massive success that lied ahead. It was while in L.A. fate would have it outside of Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘n’ Waffles, mega star Kayne West was enjoying a meal which led to Estelle being introduced to then-unknown John Legend. It was through this friendship the two passionate music lovers would collaborate on Estelle’s 2004 debut album, The 18th Day, for which she won a MOBO award.

It was time to begin recording her second album and by now Estelle was discontent with her label. After their many attempts to remove creative control from her hands, Legend, now an international, multi-platinum star, bought her out of her contract and she was signed to his new imprint, Homeschool Records, via Atlantic. Shine, Swaray’s latest album, off of Legend’s new label brought in major big time collaborators. To name a few she worked on more than 100 songs with the likes of Will.I.Am, Kanye West, Legend, Cee-Lo, Swizz Beats, and Wyclef Jean.

Many are comparing the album’s first single “Wait A Minute (Just A Touch) to Lauryn Hill, to which Swaray’s response is, “They’re waiting for me to grow dreads and start singing about Zion, I look at it like she’s legendary and if people listen to my music like they listen to hers, then I’m happy.
Recently there has been a British Invasion of female soul artist hitting the American airwaves such as Lily Allen, Adele, Amy Winehouse and before that Joss Stone. Their albums, most notably Winehouses six-time Grammy nominated album Back to Black, were like a breath of fresh air in comparison to a lot of music released by American artist over the last few years. It seems America is starving for this genre of music and only time will tell how America will embrace Estelle and her Shine.

I’ve been meeting people online since back in the very eatly AOL chat room days. Back then it was really easy because the women online at that time were early adopters of the new chat technology and they were open to the ideas of being adventurous or meeting new people in person offline after exchanging a few messages with them. These days, many women have tried the large ‘mainstream’ dating sites you’ve seen advertised on television and decided they are a scam because filling in a huge survey or paying a lot of money to be a member doesn’t make them any more likely to find a lover. So, the real question becomes… where did all those cool sweethearts from the early days go?
 
Take a look at a site like Fling.com, it’s got a huge underground population of web surfers who are looking to hookup and have a good time. Because it has not been commercialized the way the TV dating sites have been by huge corporations… Fling still attracts a big pool of people to it every single day. You can signup at Fling for Free (which is a really easy way to tell that Fling is not a scam site). They don’t waste your time with long complicated surveys and they aren’t steering you toward one profile search or another. Within minutes of making an account you’ll be able to see the difference between a real dating site like Fling, and the crappy scam sites that big companies keep spawning to steal your money.
 
Best of all, because Fling attracts the same kind of early adopters that headed for the chat room craze for years back, the quality of the women and men online is much higher than many new members might expect. These are people who are excited to meet other interesting singles, couples and even the occasional cheating housewife for passionate rendezvous in their own local area.
 
Keep in mind, modern dating sites like Fling have a lot of new innovative ways to make searching for a hookup much easier than it was back in the chat room days. You don’t need to open up a room and wait to find someone in your area, the site allows you to geo-target your profile searches to find people in walking or driving distance of wherever you are at any moment. My wife and I are swingers and we use Fling all the time to find local couples for hot dates whenever we have to travel somewhere on business… or we use it to prearrange a bunch of hookups with local singles and couples for our vacation hotspots before we arrive. If you aren’t using modern dating sites to find offline fun you are missing out on a lot of great times with great people.