I think Lex and Estelle are wrong about how Adele and Duffy have been portrayed, though! Certainly Duffy (cf Sarah and my conversation above) - I think generally there's a distinction that needs to be made between "soul" and "soulful" - D & A have been promoted as the latter but I think NOT the former so much precisely because they aren't black.

The real meat and story in the interview is how black British artists get treated by the industry/media/critics/us - the expectation of street-ness or sonic radicalism and the concurrent inability to handle the ambition of someone like Estelle when it's not in cartoon bling form.