ESTELLE

“True Romance”

(Established 1980, Inc./BMG)

A little too dignified for radio’s moist come-ons, a little too loose for R&B classicism, Estelle has never made it fully clear, in a decade-plus career, whether she was a dissenter, an aspirant, a traditionalist or something else altogether. As a result, she’s been pleasant, but not essential, a singer living between defined worlds.

But that sort of back and forth has become its own narrative. That’s clear from “True Romance,” her fourth album, on which she definitively chooses a lane by not choosing one. Instead, on this modest but certain album, she’s something of a chameleon, and an effective one, showing that versatility is flamboyance, of a sort.

This album is a cornucopia of styles delivered by a singer who clearly has learned from all of them, and who never felt the need to settle. “Something Good” is convincing in its early 1990s club music production, and Estelle sounds ecstatic over it. But on “She Will Love,” she sells lovers rock reggae just as effectively, and with a fraction of the energy. She sings pomp-heavy ballads like “Conqueror” (which has echoes of Shontelle) right before serving up peak raunch on “Make Her Say (Beat It Up).”

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On some of the songs, male vocals are used as a heavy counterpoint, like on “She Will Love,” which features the dance hall rapper Kardinal Offishall, and “Time Share (Suite 509),” which has pulpy spoken word by J. Ivy.