A perfect day for me includes Egusi soup – Sade Adu – Daughter sings on her new album
With her highly anticipated album, Soldier of Love, recently topping the charts, Nigerian-born singer Sade, has definitely made the 10-year wait worthwhile. But, what has she been up to during this mysterious hiatus? The notoriously private superstar gave American magazine EBONY an exclusive peek into her world outside of the studio. “I’ve had my ups […]
With her highly anticipated album, Soldier of Love, recently topping the charts, Nigerian-born singer Sade, has definitely made the 10-year wait worthwhile. But, what has she been up to during this mysterious hiatus? The notoriously private superstar gave American magazine EBONY an exclusive peek into her world outside of the studio. “I’ve had my ups and downs in the years between these albums, said Sade. “That’s partly why I’m able to write songs that people in some way can hear. I express feelings, real feelings.”
The magazine reports that Sade is striking in her unaffected demeanour and mellow temperament. She doesn’t wax poetic about the trappings of celebrity. If she did sit on beaches of Saint Tropez or ate crab on the balcony of a private Jamaican villa, she doesn’t talk about it today. Instead, she discusses holey socks, being domestic, cooking dinner, her favourite meat (often grass-cutter rodent) cooked in her favourite Nigerian dish of Egusi stew (“A perfect day for me includes Egusi soup.”), making sure her daughter is the centre and has a centre, and of all things, yanking potatoes out of the ground. “In many ways it’s an everyday life,” she adds.
The image of a ponytailed, rouge-lipped, slender, British-Nigerian super songstress picking her own potatoes while wearing holey socks in the backyard of her rural Gloucestershire home is not sexy at all. But that’s what home life is. “I live in the countryside now; I’ve learned some survival skills.” She jokes: “I can dig potatoes.”
Popular U.S magazine Entertainment Weekly featured her new song on their “Must-List” and gave the album an “A”, Rolling Stone wrote, “it’s unimpeachably excellent,” and The Boston Globe called it, “a rich and rewarding album.” But the accolades don’t stop there. Associated Press raved, “like a long-ago lover not quite forgotten, Sade has returned to steal our hearts with more beautiful, uncategorizable music.” Billboard was quoted as saying, “it’s been 10 years since Sade released an album, but be forewarned – the giant has awoken,” while People Magazine reminded us that “Sade remains the voice of comfort to the wounded heart.”
“Making an album, for me, is a bit like going to the moon,” she explains in the EBONY interview. “Now that I have a child, it’s impossible to completely shut off from the realities of the world. I waited until the right time [when] my family could let me go.”
And given that her daughter Ila sings on the album, is the teen prepped to become the next generation’s soulstress? “Parents try to fulfil their aspirations through their children,” Sade says before interrupting herself and asking if she sounds too preachy. “When you give them a reign to be who they want to be, it’s so much easier for them to be whoever they want to be. My mom was like that. She was very free with us. I like the idea of children being children as long as they can.”
Sade’s friend and sought-after dancer Fatima Robinson co-signs on the non-diva nature of this diva. “She really is sort of everyday, but there is this special kind of magic she has when she walks into the room,” says Robinson, who choreographed the “Soldier of Love” video. “The beauty of it is that she doesn’t necessarily recognize it. It’s there and there’s a certain kind of sensuality that she just exudes without even trying.” Sade’s multitudes of fans – in Nigeria and abroad – will no doubt agree.