NOVEMBER 1984 ...Chaka Khan says, I Feel For You
“I can sing that stuff in my sleep.” CHAKA KHAN
NOVEMBER 24
Chaka Khan had already had a big hit this year. In April the Grammy-winning Ain’t Nobody, credited to Rufus & Chaka Khan, had reached UK Number 8. But Rufus, the Chicago funk outfit she’d first sung with in 1972, were no more. Now a solo artist, on this November 1984 day she was enjoying her third week as Britain’s Number 1 with I Feel For You, taking the US Number 3 slot at the same time.
“Chaka is definitely one of the most important singers in American pop music history,” her masterful producer Arif Mardin later told writer Bill DeMain. “She has total mastery over her craft and her music… I Feel For You, I look at that as one of the songs I’d like to take with me to a desert island.”
Raised in a bohemian enclave on the Windy City’s South Side, the singer born Yvette Marie Stevens was a vocalist of such expressive force that she could count Aretha Franklin among her admirers. Yet her career so far had been inconsistent and not always remunerative: as soul writer David Nathan recalled, her verdict in 1984 was,
“I’ve been to hell and back – in a limousine.”
Consequently, Mardin wasn’t aiming to miss when he oversaw the album that became Working over a six-month period in 16 studios in New York and Los Angeles, he and Chaka were assisted by the likes of Russ Titelman, David Frank, Average White Band and Toto personnel, and other top sessioneers. A polished mix of R&B and electro, the most arresting song was the title cut, a Prince cover featuring a harmonica solo from Stevie Wonder (plus samples from Wonder’s 1963 recording Fingertips) and an introductory rap from Melle Mel of the Furious Five, fresh in every sense from the summer’s hip-hop movie Beat Street and UK Number 7 hit White Lines (Don’t Do It).
Chaka wasn’t the only artist to cover the song, which debuted on Prince’s second album in 1979. The Pointer Sisters gave it a slow Southern soul treatment on their 1982 set So Excited!, while Gary, Indiana’s Rebbie Jackson followed Prince’s arrangement more faithfully on her almost-simultaneous long-player Centipede. By contrast, Mardin’s all-out, high-gloss production both captured the hip hop zeitgeist and ensured wider crossover. The stutter effect on Melle Mel’s rap, Mardin told NPR’s All Things Considered in 2005, was actually a studio accident: “We said, Let’s keep that. That’s very interesting.” He added that his brief to the rapper was to avoid braggadocio and concentrate instead on love.
For his part, Melle Mel did not meet Chaka, and recalled first hearing the song – hailed as the first time hip-hop and R&B collided – on the radio in a cab in New York. “I was high as hell,” he said. “I thought I was dreaming!”
The hip hop flavour continued in the video. An original sleazy-but-goofy clip featured Chaka leading a revolt of female exotic dancers who then invade a male strip joint. Things were toned down for a second promo featuring the singer spliced with
scenes of DJ Chris ‘The Glove’ Taylor and bodypoppers including Shabba Doo, Boogaloo Shrimp, Pop N’Taco and Lollipop (all of whom had appeared in spring’s rap musical Breakin’) taken from a graffitisprayed fashion show filmed for designer Norma Kamali’s Street Beat range.
The month’s other engagements included November 3’s Saturday Night Live performance, playing I Feel For You and selected Rufus hits at US dates and masses of promotion. The singer seemed bemused at the song’s success, however.
“For five years I have been going into the studio, really working on creating
masterpieces, mixing jazz and rock and funk,” she said in November 21’s Smash Hits. “So now I do this song and put rapping on it to boot, which is really the pits… and look at it! It’s amazing!”
The album would go platinum in the US and chart across Europe, where she toured in 1985. A 10-time Grammy winner who still gigs and records, she would go on to collaborate with the likes of Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Barry White and Herbie Hancock. After Prince produced her 1998 LP
Come 2 My House, she sang I Feel For You live with him on tour, while both Prince and Stevie Wonder were on hand for an explosive rendition celebrating her Lifetime Achievement gong at the BET Awards in Los Angeles in 2006. Yet, having told The Face, “I can sing that kind of stuff in my sleep,” she admitted to being bored with her biggest single in an interview with The Guardian in 2015. But she still acknowledged, “I guess I’ll be singing it for the rest of my life.”