Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan
Yvette Marie Stevens, better known by her stage name Chaka Khan, is an American singer whose career has spanned four decades, beginning in the 1970s as the frontwoman and focal point of the funk band Rufus. Widely known as the Queen of Funk, Khan has won ten Grammys and has sold an estimated 70 million records worldwide. Khan was ranked at number 17 in VH1's original list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. In 2015, she was...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionR&B Singer
Date of Birth23 March 1953
CityNaval Station, IL
CountryUnited States of America
Painted faces, sun burnt skin, fixed expressions, smiles worn thin.
A song is not going to change this damn world. Instead of making people mad about this shitty situation, it's going to make everybody happy. It's a false thing. It's like a lullaby as opposed to a gun. People need to be slapped into reality and music just doesn't do that.
But me and my sister knew all the Doris Day and Frank Sinatra songs, too.
My mother was into opera and my father was into jazz, so there was a lot of jazz in the house where I grew up.
I've always struggled so much just to appreciate myself.
Being a singer is a way for me to get to a platform to do more.
I'd been in a vicious cycle and circle of people and couldn't see my way out. So I picked myself up one day about 15 years ago and moved where I didn't know anyone.
As you get older, though, you realize there are fire extinguishers. You do have an ability to control the flames.
I mean, I'm not unhappy, but there's still so much I want to do.
Every personal experience of my life impacts my music. I can only give what I have. And when I receive, I give it back. I often fix it or color it differently or give it in my way, but thats what its about.
I was born and raised in the University of Chicago area and had an uneventful middle-class Catholic childhood. I had a heavy Catholic upbringing and Catholicism is terrible - it's the reason there were slaves. Mass every morning at seven o'clock during Lent. It's a totally negative, man-made religion.
I can only give what I have. And when I receive, I give it back.
I like to work spontaneously.
America breeds ambition and while that can be a good thing, sometimes it's not. Ambition also breeds competition and that can be a very bad thing. People become chronically preoccupied with competing and don't know when to stop. It can become unhealthy.