Word: sade
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This time around, Sade, 41, has other things on her mind besides music. In her songs and videos--hits like Smooth Operator, Your Love Is King and Kiss of Life--she evokes a world of romance and longing, of continent hopping and heart breaking. Her lyrics mirror her life. Since the release of her last CD, the elegant Love Deluxe (1992), Sade has divorced Spanish filmmaker Carlos Scola, taken up with Jamaican record producer Bob Morgan and, with Morgan, had her first child, Ila, now 4. Says Sade: "My happiest moment was definitely when I was in the hospital holding...
...Sade has also encountered drama outside her romantic life. In 1998 a judge in Kingston, Jamaica, ordered an arrest warrant for Sade after she failed to appear at a hearing on reckless-driving charges. "It wasn't really a traffic incident, to be honest," says Sade, who claims that a Jamaican policeman tried to pressure her into giving him a bribe. "It got blown into some incredible farcical event." In order to avoid arrest, Sade says she plans never to return to the island...
...doesn't have to pretend to be resolute. Born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, the daughter of a white English nurse and a Nigerian teacher, she's been overcoming obstacles--cultural and artistic--virtually her entire life. Sade says she has always felt "accepted," but when she was 11 and living in England, she recalls being surrounded by white schoolboys and assailed with taunts such as, "Go black home, you'll be all white in the morning...
Lovers Rock draws deeply on Sade's past. It's a solemn album, and although not religious, its soulful vocals and reggae-inflected grooves have the quiet power of prayer. In the meditative song Immigrant, Sade revisits the discrimination her father faced when he came to England. "He didn't know what it was to be black," she sings, "'Til they gave him his change but didn't want to touch his hand." On Slave Song, she draws inspiration from the suffering of her African ancestors: "Teach my beloved children who've been enslaved/ to reach for the light continually...
Critics sometimes dismiss Sade's music as being too soft, too bland, too lovelorn. Sade says her critics should adjust the volume on their stereos, that her music sounds better when it's "played loudly." She lets tiny fluctuations in her music carry emotional weight, and she wants listeners to hear the particulars. After all, isn't love best measured in miniature?--a look across a breakfast table, a forgotten anniversary, a hug that lingers past hello...