Chaka Khan

Yvette Marie Stevens (born March 23, 1953), known professionally as Chaka Khan (/ˈʃɑːkə ˈkɑːn/ SHAH-kə KAHN), is an American singer and songwriter. Known as the "Queen of Funk", her career has spanned more than five decades beginning in the early 1970s as the lead vocalist of the funk band Rufus. With the band she recorded the hits "Tell Me Something Good", "Sweet Thing", "Do You Love What You Feel", and the platinum-certified "Ain't Nobody".

Her debut solo album featured the number-one R&B hit "I'm Every Woman" (which became a pop hit for Whitney Houston). Khan scored another R&B charts hit with "What Cha' Gonna Do for Me" before becoming the first R&B artist to have a crossover hit featuring a rapper, with her 1984 cover of Prince's "I Feel for You". More of Khan's hits include "Through the Fire" and a 1986 collaboration with Steve Winwood that produced a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100, "Higher Love".

Khan has won eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. With Rufus, she achieved three gold singles, one platinum single, four gold albums, and two platinum albums. In the course of her solo career, Khan achieved three gold singles, three gold albums, and one platinum album with I Feel for You. She has also worked with Whitney Houston, Ry Cooder, Robert Palmer, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Guru, Chicago, Joni Mitchell, Gladys Knight, De La Soul, Mary J. Blige, Ariana Grande, and Sia. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 65th most successful dance club artist of all time. She was ranked at No. 17 in VH1's original list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. Khan has been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times as a solo artist and four times as a member of Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, the first time in 2012 as a member of Rufus. In 2023, Khan was picked as an inductee in the Musical Excellence category.

Yvette Marie Stevens was born on March 23, 1953, in Chicago, Illinois to Charles Stevens and Sandra Coleman; she has described her father as a beatnik who struggled with heroin addiction. She was raised in the Hyde Park area of Chicago's South Side. After her parents divorced when she was 10, her father abandoned them for over 5 years but returned in her late teens. Speaking of her Catholic upbringing, Khan described it as “terrible” and said it was a "great relief" when she left it. Her sister Yvonne is a singer known as Taka Boom, while her brother Mark formed the funk group Jamaica Boys and was a member of soul group Aurra. She has two half-sisters, Zaheva and Tammy.

Khan attributed her love of music to her grandmother, who introduced her to jazz as a child. Khan became a fan of rhythm and blues music as a preteen and when she was 11 years old she formed a girl group, the Crystalettes, which included her sister Taka. In the late 1960s, Khan attended several civil rights rallies with her father's second wife, Connie, a strong supporter of the movement. She joined the Black Panther Party after befriending a fellow member, activist and Chicago native Fred Hampton in 1967. At the age of 13, she was given the name Chaka Adunne Aduffe Hodarhi Karifi by a Yoruba Babalawo priest during a naming ceremony. Chaka means "woman of fire."

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.