Yvette Marie Stevens was born on March 23, 1953, in Chicago, Illinois, into an artistic, bohemian family. The eldest of five children born to Charles Stevens and Sandra Coleman, she has described her father as a beatnik and her mother as “able to do anything”. She grew up in Hyde Park, which she describes as “an island in the middle of the madness” of Chicago’s rough South Side housing projects. Her sister Yvonne went on to become a successful musician in her own right as Taka Boom. Her only brother, Mark, who was a member of Aurra and formed the funk group Jamaica Boys, was also a successful musician. Zaheva Stevens and Tammy McCrary are her other sisters.
Khan was raised a devout Catholic. She went to Saint Thomas the Apostle Church’s elementary school in Hyde Park. Her grandmother introduced her to jazz as a child, and she credits her love of music to her grandmother. As a pre-teen, Khan became interested in rhythm and blues music and, at the age of eleven, formed the Crystalettes with her sister Taka. Khan attended several civil rights rallies in the late 1960s with her father’s second wife, Connie, a strong supporter of the movement, and joined the Black Panther Party in 1967 after befriending a fellow member, activist, and Chicago native Fred Hampton.
Though many believe she was given the name Chaka while in the Panthers, she has stated that her name Chaka Adunne Aduffe Hodarhi Karifi was given to her by a Yoruba Babalawo when she was 13 years old. She left the Panthers and dropped out of high school in 1969, after attending Calumet High School and Kenwood High School (now Kenwood Academy). She started out performing in small groups around Chicago, first with Cash McCall’s group Lyfe, which included her then-boyfriend Hassan Khan. Chaka and Hassan tied the knot in 1970.
What was Chaka Khan’s biggest hit?
Khan, dubbed the “Queen of Funk,” was the first R&B artist to have a crossover hit with a rapper, “I Feel for You,” in 1984. Khan has ten Grammy Awards and an estimated 70 million records sold worldwide.
