Chaka Khan spills all of the tea about her life and career in her newest interview with Rolling Stone. She addresses speculation about her retirement from music, learning about Prince’s addiction, beef with Kanye West, and more. Here are all of your burning questions being answered!
Retirement?
She laughingly responds to the question if retirement is happening soon, “Well, I might do that three or four times, like other bitches do.” She went on to say that she fell out of love with touring over the years due to things like rude promoters, grueling travel schedules, and other “ugly shit,” so until she can find a way to enjoy that process again, she’s just record music and only do a few shows, “Right now I’m just trying to define and refine my performance [so] that every time I hit the stage I’m going to be happy to do it.” The “I’m Every Woman” singer also is looking forward to spending more time with her great-grandchildren moving forward.
Her beef with Kanye West
“I’m not hanging on to any silly grudges.” In 2003 Kanye West released “Through the Wire” which samples Khan’s voice from her 1984 song “Through the Fire.” In 2022 she came out and expressed her disapproval for the way that her voice was used in the song, sped up and made to what she believed sounded like a chipmunk. Today, she thinks that she shouldn’t have been so “salty” about the sample and should’ve had more knowledge about the rap world before even approving it in the first place.
She wasn’t aware of Prince’s fight with addiction
Chaka Khan claims that even though she believes that she is an expert on addiction, she did not know that Prince was dealing with one, “He was very adept at being private, at maintaining his privacy. That was like number one on his list of things to do. He was an absolute genius at it.” She also says that it’s only by “the grace of God” that she survived her drug use.
Upon hearing that “Ain’t Nobody” might’ve been for Michael Jackson
The interviewer brings up a rumor that Quincy Jones wanted her song “Ain’t Nobody” for Michael Jackson, “I had no idea. Nobody told me. No, I doubt it.” She believes that possibly his keyboard player and writer of the song David “Hawk” Wolinski would’ve advocated for Jackson to have the song, but that didn’t happen according to knowledge. However, she does think that the song could’ve been even more popular if Jackson sang it.
She is great friends with Joni Mitchell
The “Through the Fire” singer’s father saw the similarities between Joni Mitchell and his daughter, “My father, who’s a photographer, was taking pictures of us, when we were hanging out one night with Joni. And he said that she and I are like the dark and the light on a negative. We are like two sides of one coin.” Khan remembers earlier in her career when touring with Rufus, she would go to the backroom of the tour bus and turn on Mitchell’s music as an escape.
The story behind Chaka Khan being removed from Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love”
She felt disgusted when she heard that she would no longer be featured in “Addicted to Love,” especially because Palmer himself wanted her to record it with him, “I marveled at how something so pure and simple and beautiful could be just wiped off the face of the Earth because of money. That was crazy. We were on the same label. It would have been a win-win situation for everybody.” She did defend Robert, saying that she offered her an apology for the situation and they both agreed that racism was also a reason why she was wiped from the song.