(nyt) WHEN a man from a radio station asked Sade what she had been doing in the 10 years between albums, she told him, “I’ve been in a cave, and I just rolled the boulder out of it.” She chuckled as she recounted the exchange, with her feet tucked up on the couch at her Georgian house in the north London neighborhood of Islington. A January rain pelted the trees outside the window of the second-story drawing room, atop a graciously curving staircase. Sade, a slender figure in black pants and a black V-neck sweater, made things cozy, feeding kindling to a crackling fire in the hearth. An interview about her new album, “Soldier of Love” (Epic) — only her sixth studio album dating back to her 1984 debut, and due for release on Tuesday — stretched into a four-hour conversation. “I’ve got absolutely no real perception, properly, of time,” said Sade, 51, who was born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria. Her father was a Nigerian university teacher of economics; her mother was an English nurse, and raised her in rural England after the couple divorced. Sade’s speaking voice is even lower than the husky alto in her songs, the elegantly subdued ballads that have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide.

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