A few weeks ago, a rare picture of British-Nigerian singer, Sade Adu surfaced online with Canadian rapper, Drake and his mum in the same snapshot. By all definitions, nothing especially stood out about the image, except Sade’s rare presence which brought back conversations around the singer’s under-the-radar brand despite a cult-level following built on years of a critically successful career. The comparisons are few going by the numbers but the same can be said for Nigeria’s Asa, who has practically subsumed any semblance of a personality in her acclaimed discography. But the act has not been slight.

But the act has not been slight.

Asa rose to peak popularity in the late 2000s with an air of mystique about her. Unlike any emerging pop star at the time, sex was neither a selling point nor subject matter and interest was built solely off what she had to say, not who she was. Even a label rift before her eventual cross-over into France a couple years later was discretely settled away from the cameras. In the early 2010s, however, tabloids ran headlines about a rumoured lesbian relationship with manager and longtime friend, Janet Nwose. Asa’s team didn’t initially respond to the rumours, but the singer later backed a series of defamatory suits against the few publications who dared. The infamous near-scandal still lingers in media inside jokes till date, but her uncharacteristic response to a story that could have been a potential attention-grabbing opportunity was enough to stay further spread.

The rarity of Asa’s distance from publicity of any kind is most evident when cross-referenced with the few Nigerian celebrities of her caliber. From 2face to Wizkid, a reasonable bulk of Nigerian ‘A-listers’ have been at the front and end of varying degrees of juicy tabloid-worthy scandals they either fueled or poorly damage-controlled. Many a time, this causes the most intimate parts their personal lives to be paraded in the media for the traffic and ratings-hungry media. But save for a recent incursion with GTB over an ad theme song she no longer wants anything to do with, Asa has gradually but consistently kept her limelight right it’s meant to be: on her music.

The respect for Asa’s reclusive life is strengthened when one remembers artistic contemporaries like Harper Lee, famed fiction novelist and author of all time bestseller, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, who refused to grant press interviews for many years of her life. Or four-time Grammy award winner, Frank Ocean whose averseness to fame was demonstrated in his refusal to submit his “Blond” album for Grammy consideration last year, even though post-release feedback had been extremely positive.

Like Sade, Asa defies a world where the hunger for celebrity trumps the need to create great art. She is a truly free queen and a national treasure we should all protect.

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