Chaka Khan - What Cha Gonna Do For Me

Chaka Khan - What Cha Gonna Do For Me

Yvette Marie Stevens was born on a Naval Training Station, Illinois. She adopted the African name Chaka Khan while working for the Black Panthers circa '69-70-ish. A few years later she teamed up with Kevin Murphy and Andre Fisher to form Rufus, debuting in 1973 the group earned a few gold & platinum albums before she went solo in 1978.

Chaka kicked off her own career with I’m Every Woman (written by Ashford & Simpson) and has never looked back. 1984 was such a great year for her that following it successfully was virtually impossible. In comparison, she could only go downhill. In 1989, after a couple of flakey albums, a concerted effort was made to put Chaka Khan back in the public eye. The excellent Life Is A Dance - Remix Project, was a retrospective of a decade in the hands of 11 acclaimed remix producers of the era. It scored well and her name was back on the front page, just as well really coz....

Chaka Khan returned to form with this 1992 gem. The Woman I Am is one of Chaka's best ever solo albums, her voice crystal clear and the tunes consistently melodic. Khan co-wrote five of the songs and the strong songwriting and vocal performance more than compensate for the early 90's production. This one of Chaka's most cohesive solo albums, despite having eight different production combinations on thirteen tracks, it all goes together well. This album just shows Chaka Khan at her best, Songs like Love You All My Lifetime, the single from the album, puts Khan's voice out in the forefront where it belongs. The album cut is a powerful and stunning R'n'B number with a very infectious hook.

 Chaka Khan, Grace Jones, Gloria Gaynor and Kathy Sledge (Sister Sledge)

On this release, Ben Wolf & Andy Dean have done a great job on The Diva Edit. This 8 minute Boilerhouse opus utilises all the strongest aspects of the song while remaining faithful to its original purpose. Elsewhere, The Love Suite is handled by a backroom team of some repute. 

The mix is credited to David Shaw & Winston Jones (the only team to contribute a second track on The Remix Project album) but... a young Cevin Fisher (Burnin' Up) is on the keyboards along with Fred McFarlane (Somebody Else's Guy & Show Me Love) and the whole deal is engineered by Dave Darlington (NYC's busiest engineer, has his name on more vinyl than Porky Prime Cut). 

As you would expect with those names involved, this is a House remix, built for the dancefloor and it does the job well. The Woman I Am won a Grammy Award back around 1993 and is probably Chaka at her finest. If you like the album version I'd reccomend the album.

Three decades and five Grammy Awards down the line she is still going strong. Chaka's latest album, Funk This celebrates 30 years of solo career and it sounds pretty damn good, I guess she's set for a few more years in the public arena.