Born near Lagos, raised near London, the svelte and elegant bandleader Helen Folasade Adu, a/k/a Sade, spent MTV's first wave of raunchy sexhibitionism quietly cultivating her feminine mystique while most fame-chasing songstresses were loudly wiggling theirs. Not that her sophisti-pop proved any less commercial. For all her relative refinement, the quiet-storm royal reigns as Godmother of Neo-Soul, now a 51-year-old soberly surveying her vast yet sparse career: 50 million records sold between just six studio albums in 30 years, and you've heard moments from them all—in tapas parlors, in windchime shops, in all the sacred spaces that society has reserved for Her, the ageless face and disembodied breath of a band staffed by funkless Brits who might have wound up covering Phil Collins if they hadn't caught her on precisely the right beat. Good thing they did. In her service, they are... More >>>