Chaka Khan
The first lady of funk still hits all the notes that ain't in the book

by Terry Matthew | Published January 2008 | Features Archives

Don't call it a comeback. Nearly twenty-nine years after she first entered the charts with "I'm Every Woman," Chaka Khan has returned to take her throne. "Disrespectful," her duet featuring Mary J. Blige, hit number 1 on the Hot Dance Club charts this fall. That gives Chaka a total of seven tracks in her long career to hit #1, but her first in more than ten years.

As anyone who gives her latest album Funk This a spin knows, the original screaming diva from Chicago shows no sign of slowing down at the age of 54. She still belts out songs with heart and soul and the force of a one-woman hurricane. As her legendary producer Arif Mardin once said, she hits "all the notes that ain't in the book" - notes that no other singer can manage. A lot may have changed since the former Yvette Marie Stevens worked as a volunteer for the Black Panthers' Free Breakfast for Children program on the Southside of Chicago, but her voice is as clear and powerful as ever.

The original mix of "Disrespectful" has garnered Chaka another Grammy nomination (if she wins, this would be her eighth; she's been nominated more than 20 times), but it's the remixes that have taken the House Music scene by storm. Certain Chaka Khan tracks have long been staples for soulful House afficionados - nobody can argue that "Clouds" (originally released on Life is a Dance) isn't in a very high place on a very short list of modern classics. But lately, lest we forget about her, a mysterious remix project has put Chaka Khan back into the forefront of dance music.

Back in late August (about a month before the release date of Funk This), several mixes of "Disrespectful" by a variety of top-shelf producers began surfacing, both on the internet as well as in promo kits (both vinyl and CD) sent to select DJs. All mixes mentioned here appear to have been released with the cooperation of the record label, though they're not commercially available - "officially unofficial," you might put it. It's not unheard of for a record company to take this route, but it's still reassuring to know that you don't always have to be an outlaw to listen to dance music that people can actually, y'know, dance to.

The most common mix out there, both in terms of availability and familiarity to listeners, is Matty's Soulflower Mix, remixed by Matthias Heilbronn. The funky groove, bongos and horn section have made this one a worldwide crowdpleaser from the start. The vocal, it hardly needs to be said, is fierce. The first time I heard it, I thought Dajae and Barbara Tucker had put out a new duet together. The whole mix captures the raw power of a live Chaka Khan performance, which I've been fortunate enough to see but has sometimes proved difficult to capture on record.

Over the last few months of 2007, several additional mixes have begun to surface. Funky Junction put out a progressive mix, probably to cover a different market. And then Timmy Regisford, according to reliable sources, became the first to play a whole new mix that had everyone at the Shelter in New York going mad. This mix, by Quentin Harris, has become the rarest of them all - and lately the mix to beat in the club. One of the hottest producers in House Music, Quentin spotlights the vocals in a way that no other mix has and brings the unfrayed, unchained voice of Chaka Khan - not much different here than it was in the heyday of Rufus and her early solo albums - from the '70s to today.

Thirty years later, after highs and lows, blockbuster singles, fame on MTV and in the pop charts and now in the theater (she has been rehearsing for the role of Sophia in a Broadway production of The Color Purple), resurgence of Chaka Khan is a good lesson to those of us who came after her generation: careers, money and fame may ebb and flow, but passion and soul will always win out in the end.

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