A New ‘Red Hot’ Album Tackles a Hot Topic: Transgender Awareness

Over a soft piano riff wafts the unmistakable voice of Sade, singing a song to her son. The lyrics she wrote for the piece — her first new track in 14 years, titled “Young Lion” — are steeped in empathy and regret. “Young man, it’s been so heavy for you/You must have felt so alone,” she sings. “I should have known.”

She’s addressing her real-life son, Izaak, whose identity as a transgender man escaped her perception for some time. “Shine like a sun,” she sings to him. “You have everything you need.”

Massima Bell, a musician, model and activist who is transgender, said she’d never heard a song like that before. “It’s amazing to hear a legendary musician like Sade sing about her heartfelt experience as the parent of a trans child,” she said in an interview. “It’s incredibly powerful.”

It’s also humanizing, nailing a key goal for the sprawling new musical project that contains it. Titled “Transa,” the album, which Bell worked on as a creative producer, is the latest venture from Red Hot, the organization co-founded 35 years ago by John Carlin at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. The organization started with a star-studded album titled “Red Hot + Blue,” designed to raise funds for the fight against the disease.

In the decades since, Red Hot has released more than two dozen sets, involving hundreds of top musicians, to benefit a wealth of related causes. (The organization said it has given away $15 million over its lifetime, primarily raised by record sales.) Still, it’s been years since it has focused on an issue with the topicality of “Transa,” a project due Nov. 22, which was partly inspired by the death of the producer Sophie in 2021.