Sade Adu and Tracy Chapman Sang About Our Inner Search for Peace, Love, and Light
An anniversary appreciation for the way they poured into us through music
Over three decades ago, Sade Adu and Tracy Chapman put out two separate albums, Stronger Than Pride and the eponymous Tracy Chapman. Their words contained the unspoken resentments and bone-deep blues of women whose voices had been silenced. It could only have been serendipitous fortune that saw a debut offering from a soulful child of Southern folk cross paths with the hushed jazz stirrings of a respected veteran because on the same day and in the same year, the two singer-songwriters echoed the words of women who had spent years swallowing their own tongues. In doing so, they gave discreet but recognizable melodies to the singular ways Black women are expected to maneuver love’s imperfections—imperfections that demand a loyalty that is met with neglect and intimate embraces that lack tenderness. For women who love hard, these two albums offered soothing ointments for the festering and inherited ailments of living and loving as a hungry Black woman.
Adu and Chapman occupy two distinct spaces in the pop culture landscape as artists whose work is the structural foundation of most contemporary forays into jazz-tinged soul yet whose own lives have remained far…
