Adele rebounds from divorce with new album — and boyfriend Rich Paul
“Hello,” summer of Adele.
It’s been a slam-dunk season for the 33-year-old British songstress, who’s boasting a new bod, a new man and new digs — and is rumored to be releasing new music soon, too.
A source tells Page Six the chanteuse is “100 percent” dating NBA super-agent Rich Paul.
On Saturday, the pair were spotted sitting together at Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
It was a rare public appearance for the notoriously private singer, who was all smiles with Paul at Footprint Center in Phoenix, Ariz.
“Rich Paul, [LeBron James’] agent, brings his girlfriend to the game sitting next to LeBron. His girlfriend is Adele,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said in his “The Lowe Post” podcast.
With her divorce from Simon Konecki finalized earlier this year, Adele hasn’t let the grass grow under her feet.
There are rumors that her next album — thought to already be completed but likely to be released in the fall — will be a breakup album about the split, marking a return to the heartbreak territory of her blockbuster “21” album.
“She spent months in the studio and word is we’re going to hear about her divorce and all the heartbreak that she’s been through,” Lori Majewski, host of SiriusXM Volume’s “Fierce: Women in Music,” told The Post.
According to Majewski, the theory is the new album release has been held up by the pandemic, which is why the singer only hosted “Saturday Night Live” in October, but wasn’t the musical guest.
“Adele is the queen of heartbreak. And the material, especially ‘Hello,’ which hit a nerve with audiences around the world, was about heartbreak and splitting up with a former love,” Majewski added.
“Now she’s divorced, so I imagine that that drove her into the studio right away. She has so much to sing about. I think we’re ready to cry together with Adele.”
Reps for Adele and Paul did not respond to request for comment.
With the new record under her belt, the singer appears to be embracing the next phase of her life. Worth a reported $190 million, she also appears ready to move on from her divorce.
Paul is a 5-foot-9, 40-year-old, Beverly Hills-based basketball agent whose career has been on an incredible trajectory. He is reportedly worth $100 million.
The two share similar tales of meteoric success. Both grew up in modest homes — she in South London and he in West Cleveland — before becoming self-made multimillionaires.
“I think Rich is very good at giving people tough love. He has an ability to not be afraid and not back away from a tough conversation, because of the way he grew up, in part from having a father who died at a young age and having a mother who was a drug addict,” Maverick Carter, a LeBron James friend and Paul confidant, recently told the New Yorker.
“Usually, our parents protect us from tough conversations, but he had the opposite experience.”
In the same article, Paul mentions that he has been “hanging out” with “a major pop star.”
But he added, “I’m not dating, I’m single. Put that in the story.”
Majewski noted how fiercely private the normally secluded singer is, making her public appearance with Paul all the more intriguing.
“Adele is very careful about her image. She must be very comfortable with this new person to allow herself to be photographed, knowing how people will talk when they see a photo like that,” said Majewski.
The 15-time Grammy-winning singer is also clearly set on making Los Angeles her home base. She has recently scooped up properties in Beverly Hills worth a combined $30 million.
In May, she picked up her third 90210 home in five years — a $10 million mansion purchased from her former next-door neighbor Nicole Richie.
She has two other adjacent properties in the celebrity enclave known as Hidden Valley, where her A-list neighbors include Katy Perry, Jennifer Lawrence, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.
In 2016, she paid $9.5 million for a mansion in the guarded and gated community; three years later, she shelled out $10.65 million for an adjacent five-bedroom, six-bathroom, midcentury-style home.
That last purchase came on the heels of her estrangement from Konecki. In September 2019, she filed for divorce from the 47-year-old British charity CEO, whom she spent seven years with — first going public in 2012 before secretly marrying him in 2017 without a prenup.
Konecki, with whom she shares custody of 8-year-old son Angelo Adkins, is rumored to live in the second house she bought.
Arvin Haddad, a broker associate at the Agency and co-star of CNBC’s “Listing Impossible,” told The Post that this third home purchase brings an Adele compound into focus.
“It would be for the sake of quality of life,” said Haddad of the multiproperty arrangement. “When you look at the property as a whole, the Nicole Richie segment really protects the backyard for privacy … it does create a very private compound.”
Celebs with the means tend to favor compounds, added Haddad.
“You control who your neighbor is, and a lot of times it goes to family members, staff.”
It would make cultivating a harmonious family life a lot easier.
“She just seems happy being a mom and working,” a source told People in 2019, referring to the split. “She’s free and spirited and feels like a new person.”
Around that time, Adele started making other significant lifestyle changes — and began showing off a newly trim body.
The star reportedly lost 100 pounds on the red-wine-and-chocolate-friendly sirtfood diet — and on her 32nd birthday in May 2020, she faced both praise and rebuke when she posted a pic of her seriously slimmed-down physique.
“I know I look really, really different since you last saw me,” the singer said during her opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live” last year.
“But actually because of all the COVID restrictions and the travel bans, I had to travel light and I could only bring half of me, and this is the half I chose.”
In April of this year, she turned heads at an Oscars party celebrating actor Daniel Kaluuya’s win, where she hung out with Drake and other stars.
But it’s her love life that’s keeping her most busy these days.
As reported by Page Six earlier this month, the star was seen with British rapper Skepta, her rumored boyfriend at the time, at the Cabazon Outlets mall outside San Bernardino, Calif.
The pair had been linked since last October, when a source told People that they had been dating for months.
“They run in the same circles in London, and she’s having fun,” the source told the outlet.
Skepta, 38, whose real name is Joseph Junior Adenuga, also dated model Naomi Campbell.
But days after her “SNL” appearance, Adele took to Instagram to ostensibly shoot down any dating rumors, writing, “Happy Halloween! I’m going back to my cave now to be the (single) cat lady that I am! Peace out til next year ♥️.”
It’s been nearly six years since her last album, “25,” was released in November 2015. As fans eagerly await her new album, they seem happy to gobble up the star’s recent sightings.
For now, she seems to be hitting all the right notes with LA-based power player Paul, who reportedly dated Tobey Maguire’s ex-wife, jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer, in 2019.
The high-flying sports agent owns two LA mansions and has three children.
Whether the relationship will go the distance is unclear, with one music industry expert skeptical of the fanfare.
“When you have an album about to come out, suddenly you see a lot of pictures of them,” the expert said, referring to the music industry’s promotional machine.
But Majewski thinks that Adele remains authentic and unconcerned with cultivating any particular image.
“There seems to be a lack of calculation with Adele. Everything about her seems real. Nothing about Adele is manufactured.”
Additional reporting by Zachary Kussin
