Aaliyah and Sade have the same birthday

20 years apart. that's not odd?

Sade born was born in January 16 1959 in Ibadan, Nigeria.

I've tried to say how it was, in those boombox times. When I am near 21, and poor, and pregnant. There is no clue as to what next Tuesday will bring, let alone the rest of this one, when the Challenger explodes every minute on the mute TV.

The boy who had just as much sex with me as I with him has no decision in his belly, and he hasn't called. I am jealous of his freedom yet refuse to leave my neatly made secondhand mattress. My head is between a landline and my booming system. I am abandoned and loudness is a weighted blanket. The twirling cassette, from a girl named Sade, is called Diamond Life.

This is 1986, and though Sade's second album, Promise, is everywhere, I crave the multiple entendres of Diamond's "Cherry Pie." There's grit — "Sally," "Frankie's First Affair" — in the way Sade names names. Haven't I told you before, she sings: We're hungry for a life we can't afford. Even the album's title feels coded: It would be bea…