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
Every personal experience of my life impacts my music.
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 loved him [Prince], the world loved him.Now he's at peace with his Father.Rest in power, Prince , my brother.
There is no perfect love - that's something I'm very realistic about.
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 mean, I'm not unhappy, but there's still so much I want to do.
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.
Being a singer is a way for me to get to a platform to do more.
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.
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.
There are a lot of people I would have liked to have collaborated with, and would still like to.
Painted faces, sun burnt skin, fixed expressions, smiles worn thin.
I won't become a household word, or achieve the fame I deserve in my lifetime because of the way I look.