There are a lot nicer parts of London to waste a rainy Saturday morning than the NW10 village of Wilesdon. The most exciting

shop's the Indian grocery where the spices have a shelf life so long you're not sure if you're buying curry powder or seven

months' worth of dust from the cars whizzing by. You could try to while away the hours in a record shop, but it's either Irish

folk stuff or a 45-minute trot through the drizzle to a little hole in the wall that's only got singles anyway. Why am I stuck

here in the first place? I'm waiting for Miss Sade Adu, who's three hours late, thanks to a negligent

publicist, scarfing down biscuits and tea and watching a repeat of the football (that's soccer in

American) match on telly in the kitchen of the Power Plant. Sooner or later Sade will roll

on in here to begin working on the follow-up to Diamond Life with Stuart Matthewman, Paul Denman, Andrew Hale

and their producer, Robin Millar, in the one tiny studio that's working. (The other one's under construction,

you understand.) But first she'll stop and chat to my little Sony, over the noise of the power drills

and the traffic churning through the muck on Highroad outside. Sade is intimate

with the nooks and crannies, the silver doors and

loftcontrol the suspended minuscule room floor Power Plant, like the the studio at over the Diamond having 11 recorded on songs here. Five have weeks been Life more plugging and its at spent successor, away group’s is thrilled singer, lead for the one, be and finished with promotional here to a of jabbering punch States, the to tour away hits position the higher her to even on an “Obviously necessity,” it’s she charts. a of trek that packed six four-city her says of work into “but isn’t it always weeks two, enjoyable It’s time. way to pass your a an joy back studio. We’re doin the real be to something something that ing concrete, more directly productive, as well. seems immediate results from what You see can

easy listening and

the the jazz of top to charts. “The inpop

you’re doing.”

Not that the 25-

year-old, first time

singer expected the

from results she saw Life—-which Diamond

forbid, brought, god with soul combined

“Your (of Love commercial stant success King,” in England) surprised Is no me “It didn’t end,” candidly admits. fit in she charts in It didn’t sound the way. comany Still, number six fortable.” clambered it to Anglo-land, but then than in stranger songs (like St. School Choir’s Winifred’s the that of “There’s No-One Like Quite version Grandma”) actually number have to got What though, surprising, was more one. that market less accessible in a to was music, United States, namely the eclectic single, “Smooth Operator” made Sade’s Top And of sudden Americans all 10. the $ learn that nothing Sade had do had to to

it that Marquis the with de, pronouncwas shar-day, and that of four it ed a group was this poised called led by woman young Sade Adu.

The is

from the stand deliberate to apart attempt of British but the culture, balance pop of African Sade’s childhood. her legacy father taught the in university Nigerian at and family the school’s lived the Ibaden, on until four. “My parents’ she compound was had down point the broken relationship to return,’’ children of the of youngest two no “so mother borrow[English] recalls, my from did flit moonlight friends, ed a money Lagos home. fairly hard It and to was came get of especially for Nigeria, out to me

born I because was My brother there.

was all right because

he was korn jn Eng-

land. We were on my

mother’s passport, so

we were a^*e t0

leave. Although, in a

sense, she should

taken have two not children Nigerian

it’s It’s fatherland. their not from on, away cricket. lucky just She to get not was away.”

"I've always had a passion and commitment to music as a consumer."

Sade’s grandwith The roomed trio in little until her village eccentric parents an completed nurse’s her training. mother when I 11 mother remarried “Then my was mad butcher live by the and this went to we in Clacton-on-Sea,” she giggled. coast, basically lot of and “He potty gave a was friends he because entertainment to my so Not he arrested long weird. ago was was a peeping well they after That tom. was as So the nights off and he all went divorced. thought he going with another off she was

through peeping probably he was woman windows.” people’s

with her relationship Though her step“terrible,” quite Sade father got on was with mother and her characterizes her well “fairly School happy.” childhood was as subject, the teachers where another her bright lazy, in but thought except English She and languages, sports. a ran times for in competitions, the few county it dewhen PE instructor the but up gave her after during week the school tained she the trials. didn’t at because turn up she laughs, “I’m in cab I slug. Now, get a a slug I’m going, wherever get and way to my make effort walking the stairs of the out, up exhaust I’m keep-fit myself. not and a Beyond definitely!” redemption, fanatic.

lit At for Martin’s School St. she 18, out Art in London, she thinks the though of now was farcical” and would “pretty course taken in English literature, degree have a that Studying ol’ 20/20 hindsight. given design, though, setting led fashion to up struggling with St. Maranother business a “It frustrating for of both really tiner. was because think the time, all have you to us business, business, money, money, buttons, buttons how business, on many down Designing the cost. this cut to secondary, superfluous, becomes thing really is that only matters capable being of how are a you businesswoman,” failed the and science student math Sade’s occas..A assesses. modelbits ional of for other ing art friends school the of kept two fed. Singing came along literally just by chance, when in 1981 an “acquaintance” named Lee Barrett, whom she’d met at a club, asked, could she sing? “He figured maybe I’d be all right because I was tinted,” Sade says.

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Barrett was at that point managing a pop/funk aggregation called Pride, who’d just lost their backing vocalists and needed replacements for an important date looming on the horizon. An audition for the untried singer was arranged. “I was, I’ll say, fairly terrible,” she admits. “I was just thrown in at the deep end and asked to sing harmonies, I was told to come in and out, meant to be some sort of genius computer brain and remember what I was supposed to be doing. Basically, I failed. I was very shocked. Lee came back and said, ‘I’m sorry, but they don’t think you’re suitable.’” Unable to find anyone else, two weeks later Pride asked her to come on board. She said OK, “not with any aims or thoughts of it becoming a future. I thought maybe once or twice a week, do one show a month. No big deal.”

Abandoning her designing partner to a more lucrative teaching career, Sade threw herself into the musician’s life. Whatever training she had she’d gotten from buying albums since she was 13, mostly Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Nina Simone, “anything soulful. I’ve always had a passion and commitment to music as a consumer. Records I love make me completely happy, and I’ve always mixed with people like that, people who love music and get very precious about songs they’ve discovered. They’re almost as musical as I am. If you enjoy something, you get involved with it,” she says, explaining her transfer from record listener to record maker. And once the singing became a full-time job, it wasn’t long until the fledgling branched out even more, touching up arrangements on the stuff she had to vocalize, switching around a word or two that would make her cringe. Presto, a songwriter was born.

Her first was “Smooth Operator,” penned with Ray St. John, Pride’s guitarist, so she would have a solo spot in the band’s set. Within the context of Pride’s funk, “Smooth Operator” naturally stood out quite a bit. People started coming up to the “tinted” one, saying, “Why don’t you start your own band?” Eventually she did, taking Pride’s drummer, bass and sax players with her. “Basically it was very sparse, sparser even than it is now,” she explains. “Stuart (Matthewman) had to play sax and guitar. But it wasn’t like this big breakaway. We even supported Pride, and we were encouraged by everyone in the band. Ultimately, the rest of Pride said go and take a deal. That’s what we did.”

The next nine months of Sade’s gestation (the group, not the singer) were anything but easy. They weren’t as “drossy” as having the foursome huddle together in a freezing and drafty flat, but they weren’t exactly high tea and clotted cream either. Sade (the singer) was better off than her mates, as the occasional modeling job wandered in every now and then, but the difference between singers’ hours and models’ hours didn’t leave a lot of time for sleep. The rest of the band was on the dole, collecting the grand sum of 25 pounds a week.

They might not have been making money but they were making a name for themselves in the trendy clubs that would set up and flourish for a night with a local record spinner and live talent, then move on to some other town. Sade attracted a following there of “people with taste,” the singer describes. “Not just because they came to see us, but because they’re a slightly more discerning crowd who wouldn’t go to the McDonald’s-esque sort of discos or nightclubs that are set up. They were young people who liked good music, basically.”

The people turned on the press who turned on the record companies who began dangling the carrot every new band busts their butts to get, the OFFER. However, as Sade points out, it’s all very well getting OFFERS, but getting a good OFFER is the point of it all. “Six points and 60 pounds advance aren’t much good to anybody,” she says acidly. Epic, though, coughed up something “decent-ish,” based on a three-song demo tape the group had made under the careful ear of Robin Millar, then sat back and watched “Your Love Is King” charm the British Isles into submission. Months later, “Smooth Operator” did the same thing on the opposite side of the Atlantic—and, well, there you have this particular variation on “A Star Is Born.”

Not that it’s alt been as silky as Sade’s chocolate vocals, or as smooth as Matthewman’s moody guitar. There have been HASSLES. Like the time the record company arbitrarily sliced a scene from Julian Temple’s video of “Smooth Operator” that depicted the singer climbing out of bed because that supposedly wasn’t the image the honchos had decided she should project. Then there was the time the band found “Your Love Is King” was included on a compilation disc the public could send away for if they collected enough wrappers from MacVittes biscuits. Certainly, though, there have been COMPENSATIONS. Like the money. She no longer has to search down the back of the settee for money to buy the cat a tin of food. And the new flat in Islington she shares with her boyfriend, Robert Elms, is warm. But most of all, Diamond Life’s success has allowed Miz Adu and her friends to make the kind of music they want without compromise, and that’s what she says she wants more than anything. “Our dream was to make a record of our music. We wanted to make records as a group and stick together as a group and to enjoy it. Nothing can come between that—-and you musn’t let anything come between that,” she declares. “If we make tons and tons of money through our music, fine. I’m not going to give it back to the record company. But my main object isn’t to make tons and tons of money.”

So here she sits at the Power Plant on this gloomy afternoon. The snatches of lyrics she keeps in a green cardboard box and the melodies she hums into a portable tape recorder have been enlarged into full-blown songs, the basis for this new record. Like its predecessor, it will be the kind of music that Sade wants to make, “good music with a sort of timelessness to it, music that will be around in 20 years,” the band’s mainspring hopes. “Smooth Operator” in 2005? Well, who knows? Who woulda thought a Nigerian-born, teenaged-runner-turned-fashion-designer would have become the hottest singer and songwriter since homemade pasta? Stranger things have happened in this crazy world of rock ’n’ roll.