She remains a Smooth Operator, no?

Before record stores neared extinction, Sade was often stocked in the easy listening section. The band’s breakout success in the 1980s owed much to the advent of adult contemporary radio, where huge hits like “Smooth Operator” and “The Sweetest Taboo” eventually got sandwiched between selections from Michael Bolton and Kenny G. But then and now, Sade had an appeal that lifted it far above the slush pile of schlock.

The band’s trench-coat-favoring Nigerian-born frontwoman, Helen Adu, known to the world just as Sade, is more responsible for the popularizing of gold hoop earrings than an entire industry of jewelry executives. ..As a generation turned, house D.J.s turned remixes of Sade ballads into club classics, and a raft of hip-hop artists repeatedly sampled her…Sade is one of the most relentlessly quiet famous people on the planet. But in her extended silences, her place in the pantheon of cultural…