The pop papers would have you believe that Sade Adu is some sort of singing Yoruba princess. Tall, statuesque, beautiful she certainly is. But she’s also - and I’m very glad of this - a bright north London kid with a cheeky smile and a big mouth that’s obviously chewed some gum in its time.
This Sade is the possessor of a dark, late-night voice of the kind you put on when you want to be alone, but not completely. When she comes on the radio mouthing the words of her new single, Your Love Is King, it’s as if the radio is leaning over and whispering something nice in your ear.
Her father came from Nigeria to be a student at the LSE. Her mother is a nurse, and white. The family followed the father back to Nigeria. But when Sade was four her mother brought the two children back to England. It’s a very patriarchal society. Nigerians are terribly serious about their children. In the end Sade’s mother had to run away.
Sade herself only went back three years ago, having waited until she was over 20 and had her own passport. She was greeted as a long lost daughter returning to the fold. They didn’t want her to leave. In a small house, in a small Yoruba village 50 miles out of Lagos, she met her grandmother and saw her grandfather’s room. It hadn’t been touched since he died.
“I started listening to music seriously when I was about 12. When I started growing up you could say. When your bosoms come you get a record player.” She listened to Al Green, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, displaying right from the start the precocious maturity which is the most impressive characteristic of her voice, her looks, her business sense and her view of life. Sade doesn’t want to be an overnight sensation. She wants to be around for a long time.
She only began singing after she’d completed a three-year fashion course at St Martin’s. The songs she sings are her own and they’re about what she calls the politics of life and I call love. Everyone who’s anyone is tipping her to be the next… well take your pick from Nina Simone or Billie Holliday or Diana Ross.
Sade, incidentally, is pronounced Sharday.
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