Member-only story
And the Funk Still Lingers On: Chaka Khan’s 1982 Eponymous Masterpiece
In an era where the R&B landscape festered in the wake of disco’s tragic collapse, the musical union between Chaka Khan and her producer, the late great Arif Mardin was more than crucial. Khan already laid her Midas touch on the music scene as the fiery lead singer of the Chicago multiracial outfit, Rufus. Vivacious and impulsive, she ushered in a new era of female soul that reflected chic sensuality and bold-and-foxy dynamism in black womanhood during the 1970s. In his own right, Mardin was a master of pop-soul music, with an affinity for its emergent and enduring nuances. He was known as an accomplished arranger and orchestrator with credentials in classical music, but it was his appreciation for black music that put him in a class of his own.
Over the course of her first three seminal recordings after breaking from Rufus — 1978’s Chaka, 1980’s Naughty, and 1981’s What Cha’ Gonna Do For Me — Arif Mardin embraced Khan’s mightily broad and flexible voice as a central element to his indispensably varied musical templates, just as he’d done with Aretha Franklin, Bette Midler, and Roberta Flack before. Together, the influential Chicago powerhouse and legendary…
