In his recent cover story for Rolling Stone, reporter Brian Hiatt writes about what would become his final visit to Prince’s Paisley Park complex, in January of 2014. At one point, he describes standing in front of a mural “where a painted image of Prince, arms spread, stands astride images of his influences and artists he, in turn, influenced” (Hiatt 2016). Among the “influences” depicted in the mural are the usual suspects from Prince’s Grand Central days–Sly and the Family Stone, Tower of Power, Grand Funk Railroad–as well as Chaka Khan.

Indeed, Prince and Chaka go way back. In his teen years, he’d been “a fan and a fanatic, too, because I used to run home and see everything she was on,” he told the Philadelphia Daily News in 1998 (Pendleton 1998). According to biographer Jon Bream, the apartment where Prince lived around the time of his signing to Warner Bros. had “45 rpm records nailed to the wall next to a poster of Chaka Khan” (Bream 1984). During the recording of his 1978 debut album For You, he would listen to records by Chaka and her group Rufus to get in the right mood for his vocal sessions; “He absolutely loved that girl,” assistant engineer Steve Fontano recalled to biographer Per Nilsen (Nilsen 1999 37). At one point, Prince even lured Chaka to the Record Plant by pretending to be Sly Stone over the phone. When she showed up, he later remembered, “I was so in awe of her I couldn’t speak, so she listened to me play for a little while, then she left” (Pendleton 1998).

Obviously, Chaka was a sex symbol; to be a Black teenager lusting after her in the mid-1970s was the rule, not the exception. But Prince’s fixation with her was much more complex and interesting than a simple crush: she was a genuine influence on his growth as a singer, as much as Carlos Santana was an influence on his growth as a guitarist. At the risk of overstating things, it’s important to acknowledge the context here. The pop music world, Black and white, has always been heavily stratified along gender lines, with unequivocally male artists firmly at the top of the hierarchy; for a heterosexual 17-year-old or 18-year-old boy to view a woman artist as a role model is, frankly, still an anomaly to this day. 40 years ago, it was evidence of an astonishingly bold artistic direction.

Prince’s 1976 home recording of “Sweet Thing” by Chaka Khan and Rufus demonstrates just how bold that direction was. He doesn’t just shy away from the song’s ostensibly feminine qualities; he actively accentuates them. When Chaka sings “Sweet Thing” (see above), it is in its own way a subtle undermining of gender roles: her performance is strong and assured, providing the gospel-inspired “heat” and “fire” to complement her (male) band’s silky, demure musical backing. When Prince sings it, however, he takes on a more passive, plaintive role, the kind more stereotypically associated with a woman: his falsetto is so delicate and fragile, one can almost imagine it blowing away like dandelions in the wind. And at the very moment in the song when Chaka’s vocals reach the peak of their power–the aforementioned “you are my heat, you are my fire” lines in the bridge–Prince just gets more vulnerable, softly harmonizing with another track of himself singing in an even higher register.

This reversal of gendered expectations would, of course, become a hallmark of Prince’s artistic persona. One of his most significant contributions to the cultural history of pop music was his inversion of the hypermasculine, hairy-chested “soulman” archetype of contemporary R&B artists like Teddy Pendergrass, presenting himself instead with a softer, more coquettish (if equally hairy-chested) seductiveness. More than any other singer before him, he made himself both subject and object of what feminist psychoanalytic theorists term the gaze, upsetting the whole gendered imbalance of power in the process. And what’s most remarkable of all is that he was already well on his way to doing that when he was still a kid just out of high school, recording acoustic cover songs in his friend André Anderson‘s basement.

Prince’s “Sweet Thing” cover also marked the prelude to a decades-long artistic kinship with Chaka Khan. Most obviously, Chaka made his 1979 song “I Feel for You” into a massive hit in 1984–albeit with a frenetic arrangement that borrowed more from New York’s emergent freestyle scene than from Prince’s “Minneapolis Sound.” But their mutual appreciation extended much further, with Chaka signing to Prince’s NPG Records in 1998 and joining him onstage on several occasions, including the August 28, 1998 performance at London’s Café de Paris filmed for the U.K. television special/home video release Beautiful Strange. “Sweet Thing” in particular remained a staple in Prince’s live repertoire all the way up to his final months: his last known performance of the song was on February 20, 2016 at the Sydney Opera House, the fifth date of his tragically truncated Piano & a Microphone Tour.

https://princesongs.org/2...eet-thing/

Great post.

The way Prince took female energy and reflected it is very common.
I think Chaka being a the Wild Child, helped influence Prine's expression as well.

Thank you! Great read

Very nice. Like Prince, was a huge Chaka fan during her 1970s Rufus prime. There were not many female singers who really did it for me but she is in a league all her own IMO, maybe only rivaled by Aretha. She was fiery, sexy, funky and rock and roll, but also an amazing balladeer. Saw her and Rufus at Hollywood Roxy Theater in 1978. She seemly clearly under the influence of something, but when she opened up her mouth and let loose from her lungs it blew the roof off the joint and was big time goose bumps. She kept complaining to the spotlight operator that it was too bright in her eyes, and best of all at one point she walked on top of the tables next to the stage where me and my friends were sitting and reached down and ate a french fry off my plate in the middle of the show! I later joked that forshadowed her later packing on the pounds. But still love Chaka.

I have a confession to make about Chaka Khan: when I was pregnant and having morning sickness, her song "Tell Me Something Good" (with Rufus) literally gave me morning sickness.

It was years before I could listen to that song without running to the bathroom.

"I Feel For You" changed it all for me.

Really cool post. Thank you for this.

Café de Paris is one of all-time favorites. I love the way their voices and her voice/his guitar blend and complement each other.

It is fascinating the way it all swirls around, with Stevie Wonder writing Chaka & Rufus' first major hit in Tell Me Something Good (they also covered his Maybe Your Baby on their debut album) and her later covering Prince's I Feel for U, with Prince in turn clearly being majorly influenced by both of them (Chaka for her singing and attitude and Stevie for his vocals, multi-instrumental studio wizardry and songcraft). And then Prince ended up being on records with both of them. Wish he could have done more on record with Stevie though. Interesting to note how Stevie also very inclined to write for and work with females, besides Chaka including Syreeta Wright and Aretha (Until You Come Back to Me).

Nice! Thanks for sharing, kitbradley.

HardcoreJollies said:

It is fascinating the way it all swirls around, with Stevie Wonder writing Chaka & Rufus' first major hit in Tell Me Something Good (they also covered his Maybe Your Baby on their debut album) and her later covering Prince's I Feel for U, with Prince in turn clearly being majorly influenced by both of them (Chaka for her singing and attitude and Stevie for his vocals, multi-instrumental studio wizardry and songcraft). And then Prince ended up being on records with both of them. Wish he could have done more on record with Stevie though. Interesting to note how Stevie also very inclined to write for and work with females, besides Chaka including Syreeta Wright and Aretha (Until You Come Back to Me).

Aah! What a blessed trio--Stevie, Chaka, and Prince. Stevie & Chaka have such firey heartfelt vocal stylings that Prince had to embrace some of their influence to project along the R&B continuum. And my Mom loves them both, too (Luv ya, Mom)! Pair that with Prince's own self-harmonizing, and we were given new magic! I can imagine that Prince felt a notion to connect Clare Fischer to his own compositions after hearing some of Fisher's orchestrations contributed on the Rufus albums. And Stevie's own synthesizer programming may have had something to do with what you hear on some Prince albums, Controversy, Purple Rain, etc.

>

I'm very happy to have personally been in the presence of Prince sharing the stage with Chaka and Stevie.

Awesome post

seand67 said:

Awesome post

The insights about the gender thing is particularly smart and makes the article all the more remarkable! Please keep posting ur articles on the org when u write a new one, I'll read your blog with much interest.

I remember when I was taking singing lessons from 97 to 2002 and having my band, I was obviously paying much attention to what P was doing in terms of singing and as I was also listening to Chaka a lot it became more and more obvious how much he had borrowed from her. There is something very atypically crystaline in the way they both sing.

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What a great post....being 4 years yonger than Prince - I was soooo into Chaka then too as many of us were....she was and still is UNIQUE in how she sings a song not just that her voice is singularly distinctive...she's got WISDOM. I think he knew then the astounding artistry that Chaka possesses ....he understood how she understood a song....and connected there - and learned it, and found a way to differentiate himself by appropriating the feminine - without losing how he was a man.

Hey all--sorry for the thread bump, but I wrote this article and I had to wait to get my account approved! I've been lurking here on and off for like 12 years, so when I saw prince.org show up as one of my blog referrals I have to admit it was an exciting moment. I would never have even dreamed of taking on a project like this if I weren't able to build from the independent "scholarship" taking place on this website, so it's a real honor to see people on here reading my stuff and digging it.

Anyway, a few people mentioned they wanted to see more. For those who are interested, I have actually posted a couple of times since the Chaka Khan post:

I Spend My Time Loving You

Don't You Wanna Ride?

Would there be interest in me creating a new thread where I can post whenever I update the blog? Mods, would this be permissible?

Anyway, thanks again for all the kind words. Like I said, seeing something I wrote get linked on prince.org was so surreal; thanks for that experience!