CHAPTER NINE: IS THERE LIFE AFTER PRINCE?

Chaka Khan’s first meeting with Prince

In an interview with Philadelphia Daily News in 1998, O(+> as Prince was known then, told the story of how he met singer Chaka Khan. He said that he met her by calling her and pretending to be Sly Stone. “I’d been a fan and a fanatic, too, because I used to run home and see everything she was on,” he revealed. “I tricked her into coming down to the studio. I imitated Sly Stone and she was looking for him, then she met me. I was so in awe of her I couldn’t speak, so she listened to me play for a little while, then she left.”

After Prince’s death, Chaka Khan told her version of the story of her first meeting with him to Billboard in 2016: “He told me he had my poster on his wall. Actually, he was in San Francisco recording at Electric Ladyland at the time. I was recording up North as well. He called me at my hotel - I was and still am very good friends with Sly Stone. He knew that, I guess, 'cause he mimicked Sly's voice completely. I was completely fooled. He said, "This is Sly, I'm down at Electric Ladyland." "OK, I'll be right down!" And that's how he got me down to the studio. I get there and there's nobody there except for one little guy in this room with a guitar. And I said, "Do you know where Sly is?" He said to me, "Hi, I'm Prince, I called you." I was very pissed. And that's how we met. (Laughs) (…) I was so pissed, I left. (Laughter) I was all, "how dare you?! Who are you, anyway?!" and all that.”

Chaka Khan’s musical journey with Prince

After their initial meeting, Chaka Khan certainly couldn’t forget Prince and paid attention to his debut album in 1978. In 2016, she told Billboard: “It was his first album… For You. I fell in love with him as a musician. So much so that the first album, it didn't really catch on like you'd expect it to, but when I heard that song, I Feel For You (on his second album), I felt that we could not let this song go unheard or unmessed-with. I gotta bring it back!”

Chaka Khan’s cover of I Feel For You became the title track of her 1984 album and in 1988 she made another cover of a Prince song for her CK album, Eternity, although it had only just been released a year earlier by Sheena Easton on her No Sound But Her Heart album. However, the CK album also boasted a brand-new song produced by Prince himself, Sticky Wicked. It featured a trumpet solo by Miles Davis, who also played on another song on the album, I’ll Be Around.

“Actually, Miles wanted to play on every song and I had to tell him, “No, we love you, but we can’t have you on every track!”" Chaka Khan recalled in the 2005 book The Last Miles by George Cole. “It’s a shame that we left it so late – we could have done more great things together. In fact, he, Prince and I were planning to get together and do a project. That was our next step after he played on my album.”

“I had so much shit to battle with in the Eighties and Nineties with my record label. I was a slave to the system until I got free from Warners,” Chaka Khan added in a 2019 interview with The Sun. “Prince and I had plans of having a label together, but things didn’t quite work out. It was going to be him, myself and Miles Davis, and we were also going to do an album together. I have no doubt we will do one in heaven.”

Chaka Khan’s unreleased album Dare You To Love Me on which she worked between 1993 and 1995 was to feature a cover of the unreleased song Pain which Prince had recorded with Rosie Gaines in 1992, but when the album got cancelled, Chaka Khan’s version got released on the 1997 Living Single soundtrack instead.

The making of Come 2 My House
When O(+> released his New Power Generation: Newpower Soul album in the summer of 1998, one of the stand-out tracks, Come On, featured backing vocals by Chaka Khan. It was a precursor to him releasing an entire album with her in the autumn of 1998 that had been recorded in November 1997 with some additional work being done in the spring of 1998.

“Actually, the Artist was instrumental in helping me to leave Warner (…) in offering some of his legal staff to help me to get freed up,” Chaka Khan revealed to BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley in October 1998. “Soon after that – within months – I was free, and we were in the studio working on a CD.”

O(+>’s recording engineer Hans-Martin Buff recalled the making of the Come 2 My House album in a 2018 YouTube interview with The Violet Reality: “Chaka Khan was a whole album. She’s an awesome lady, so I don’t know what to tell you. I think that was the toughest time in terms of the relationship between me and Prince. He was kind of in a bad mood in those days it seemed like – at least towards me, but she was awesome – great, great spirit. Amazing singer.”

“I actually rented a specific mike, so I thought that would be perfect for her vocals without asking. Much later, it was like, “Where’s that mike you had?” “I rented it.” “Let’s rent it again.” You know, so we had that for a long time, that mike. And, anyway, I set it up and then we needed just kind of a soundcheck just for level. And she didn’t even stand in front of the mike. The mike was like here (gestures far away). And she just leaned on her elbow and twirled her hair and went “Waaah!” and we were all just like (leans backwards): “Oh, my God, the Power is with us! Great!”

O(+> contributed a few songs that fit Chaka Khan’s voice perfectly: The 1995 Emancipation era outtakes Journey 2 The Center Of Your Heart and Eye’ll Never B Another Fool, as well as the previously released Don’t Talk 2 Strangers. Chaka Khan also brought a couple of songs to the project, Come 2 My House and Am Eye Happy? which she had worked on with Robert Palmer. The rest of the songs were collaborations between Chaka Khan and O(+> with some help from Larry Graham, Kirk A. Johnson and Ricky Peterson. O(+> used the music from the 1995 Emancipation outtake Feelgood as inspiration for the new song Reconsider (U Betta).

Busy in the studio and on tour with O(+>

O(+>’s keyboard player Morris Hayes had fond memories of Chaka Khan in the studio: “She immortalized me because I’m just a joking man,” he recalled in a 2017 YouTube interview with Truth In Rhythm and explained: “I went in the studio and they were working on a song called Drama and you know, Chaka, you know, she just gets it man and I remember walking in. She was singing some stuff and then she kind of made a mistake or something and you go to the B-track and do it over again and I said: “Oh my God, Prince, she gettin’ busy like a one-legged man in a kick-fight,” and he just started laughing and he said, “Tell her that, tell her that.” And I pushed the button and said, “Chaka, you in there gettin’ busy like a one-legged man in a kick-fight!” And she started laughing, too, you know. So, I leave, and I get a call like, “Morris, come to the studio,” and I come back to the studio and they had worked that line into that record. And I’m like, “Dude, you gotta be kiddin’ me right now.” She says in the song, (sings) “I’m getting busy like a one-legged man in a kick-fight and ow!” and then hit this high note and I’m like “Aaaw, oh man”. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I said: “I have been immortalized by the great Chaka Khan.”"

In February 1998, an early configuration of Come 2 My House was assembled.

Chaka Khan: Come 2 My House (February 1998)

1. Come 2 My House

2. Am Eye Happy?

3. This Crazy Life Of Mine

4. Eye Remember U

5. Eye’ll Never B Another Fool

6. Betcha Eye

7. Don’t Talk 2 Strangers

8. Journey 2 The Center Of Your Heart

9. The Drama

10. Hair

11. Pop My Clutch

12. Reconsider (U Betta)

Afterwards, the song Am Eye Happy? was retitled Spoon and the Jehova-religious song Democrazy was added and the playing order of the tracks was rearranged before the album was considered ready for release. But before the Come 2 My House album got released, Chaka Khan toured as the opening act for O(+> on his Newpower Soul Tour in the autumn of 1998, playing some old favorites and  previewing some of the new songs.

H. M. Buff related this story in the 2018 Violet Reality interview: “There was a Takumi-story - the guitar tech, he’ll forgive me for saying it: Takumi had strict direction to not let anybody touch Prince’s symbol-thing guitar and Chaka Khan came over when they were on tour together and asked Takumi if she could hold that guitar while off stage and he said, “I’m really sorry, Chaka, but he told me, “Nobody”” and then later Prince came around. He said: “Nobody says no to the Queen, so tell the Queen, whatever she wants to, she can do it.”"

In October 2020, Chaka Khan told VLADTV on YouTube that she never slept with the girl crazy Prince, though. “He’s shorter than I am,” she said. “That’s a problem for me. He’s fabulous and he’s a genius and all that and I loved him for all those things but never in that way. I didn’t want him.”

The album she made with him was released on 29 September 1998 in USA, but not until March 1999 in Europe.

Chaka Khan: Come 2 My House (summer 1998)

1. Come 2 My House (4:46)

2. Intro (0:32)

3. This Crazy Life Of Mine (2:34)

4. Betcha Eye (4:31)

5. Spoon (3:51)

6. Pop My Clutch (4:47)

7. Journey 2 The Center Of Your Heart (4:16)

8. Eye’ll Never B Another Fool (4:13)

9. Democrazy (6:08)

10. Eye Remember U (4:17)

11. Reconsider (U Betta) (4:24)

12. Don’t Talk 2 Strangers (3:16)

13. Hair (5:46)

14. The Drama (6:36)

Strangely, instead of strong songs like Betcha Eye and Journey 2 The Center Of Your Heart, the odd track out, the family friendly song Don’t Talk 2 Strangers was released as a single in the UK and a video was made for the song.

Chaka Khan: Don’t Talk 2 Strangers single (1998)

1. Don’t Talk 2 Strangers (3:16)

2. Tour The House (5:05)

3. Spoon (3:50)

The track Tour The House consisted of snippets from songs on the Come 2 My House album.
Videos were also made for Spoon and This Crazy Life Of Mine, but the album only reached number 49 on the US Billboard R&B Album Chart.

The Chaka Khan: Come 2 My House interview

Scififilmnerd met with Chaka Khan at Hotel Kong Frederik in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Friday 12 March 1999 for an interview during her promotional tour for Come 2 My House. Chaka Khan, whom Scifi had witnessed as the opening act on O(+>’s 18 August 1998 show in Copenhagen, seemed to have a large presence on stage, but when she was seated opposite him in a big armchair in the hotel lounge, she seemed small and fragile. At first, she was very reserved, but he quickly got to meet the persona he recognized from her live performance as she apparently liked his questions and opened up considerably.

Scifi: How did you start out in the music industry?

Chaka Khan: It was really by accident. I ran away from home at sixteen. My mother and I didn’t get along. I was headstrong. She was, too, but it was her house, so… I found my long-lost father whom I hadn’t seen in twelve years. I moved in with some friends on the Northside of Chicago. Joined a band called Light and we worked a couple of months in clubs in Chicago on the Northside. And I met the girl Scarlet Paulette who was with a group called Rufus. They were working the same circuit. So when my breaks came, I ran right over across the street to see Rufus and when she had her breaks, she’d come to see my band. She left the group and they asked me to join. Hers was the better group. They were getting more money, so I joined Rufus. And then I planned stuff, like, maybe make enough money to get an apartment and go back to school. But within a year we had a record deal with a company, so here I am, still waiting to go back to school.

Scifi: I was a Prince fan in the eighties and was introduced to your music because of the tracks you recorded with him. I bought your albums and got exposed to your other music as well. CK became one of my all-time favourite albums and I still listen to it a lot. I’m particularly moved by the songs The End Of A Love Affair and I’ll Be Around.

Chaka Khan: Those are Billie Holiday songs.

Scifi: You didn’t write your own lyrics back then, but you chose those songs and I’ve been wondering how personal those lyrics were to you.

Chaka Khan: I’ve listened to those songs since I was five years old. My grandmother used to play Lady In Satin a lot and those were the two songs I fell in love with when I was just a kid. And then, as I grew older, one of them especially, End Of A Love Affair, started appealing to me. I could see all sorts of similarities in my life to what she was saying.

Scifi: Have you experienced if waiting around, in regards to the song I’ll Be Around, is fruitful?

Chaka Khan: That didn’t really refer to me. I’m not waiting around for anybody. I’m too busy. Maybe that’s a wish that I have for someone to be there for me. Perhaps it’s a mirror song.

Scifi: You had some big hits in the eighties with I Feel For You and It’s My Party and then following the CK album it got kind of quiet around you for awhile. So what happened in your life back then?

Chaka Khan: I moved to London. I just sort of reassessed my whole life and what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. I lived by myself in a little apartment, a little flat in Chelsea, and sort of just got into myself for a minute and got away from everybody that I knew. I felt the need to do that. But part of the reason you didn’t hear from me wasn’t my fault. I was still recording albums. My record company was not doing their job. That’s another reason. I had albums that were released that a lot of people don’t even know I had released, which is ridiculous.

Scifi: I was at the concert with the Artist here in Copenhagen last summer and you appeared unannounced. It was a wonderful surprise, but the audience got impatient waiting for the Artist and actually booed you at the end of the set.

Chaka Khan: Oh, did they? I wasn’t aware.

Scifi: I heard that happened in other cities as well. So how was that whole New Power Festival experience?

Chaka Khan: I didn’t know about that. I didn’t hear any booing, personally. It was a great tour for us. We were just having fun, just doing our thing and doing it together. It was a good experience.

Scifi: I remember your show well, although I hadn’t heard the songs at that time. You played Eye’ll Never B Another Fool and The Drama. And I had a dream shortly after in which I met you and here we are.

Chaka Khan: (Laughs.)

Scifi: The thing that was attracting me to Prince back in the eighties was his mixture of sex and spirituality and on Come 2 My House I find that spirituality is very much present as well. Was that because of the Artists’ influence?

Chaka Khan: Possibly, or it could be I could be like that, too. I don’t know. It’s like my first CD, ever! Because it’s the first CD I’ve ever done where I did anything I wanted to do the way I wanted it without a record company looking over my shoulder telling me, “Well, this is good for radio, but that’s not.” I really got to express myself in a way that I never, in all my career, have. So it’s hard to say. I made sure that my presence is going to be as powerful on the CD as his. Because former CD’s that he’s done with other girls… They disappear. You don’t hear from them after him. Is there life after Prince? That’s the question. So I just made sure I was very strong in that the songs that we did together we would do half and half. I would do the lyrics. He’d do the music. That’s it.

Scifi: But the lyrics have kind of a spiritual feel to them and you wrote them. I’m wondering if you’ve had any metaphysical experiences yourself? Do you see yourself as a spiritual person?

Chaka Khan: Oh, yes, I’ve got several metaphysical experiences throughout my whole life. Well, you know, singers and artists are supposedly super sensitive to… stuff. I think my high level of sensitivity has probably opened me up to some stuff that sometimes I didn’t want and stuff that was good that I did want. I’m not with any organized religion or anything like that. I was raised a Catholic but I’m not practising. I live my religion. I think that I’m in a very magical and spiritual space because of the very fact that I haven’t been in a plane crash already. I’m flying every other day and it’s alright. I’m sure my number’s been up a couple of times, not just by airplanes but other stuff, too. But I’ve always had, like, a little voice inside of me that says when to leave, when to stop, shit like that, so I think that has to do with my higher self, listening to my voice, you know? It could be that. I don’t question what it is. I am just living it. It’s much simpler that way.

The Artist with wife Mayte, Chaka Khan and Larry Graham backstage
at Irving Plaza, New York, 10 April 1998 

Scifi: One of my favourite tracks is Eye Remember U, which I think is very beautiful.

Chaka Khan: Thank you. That is Larry Graham and I.

Scifi: I was wondering how you fared with the one you remembered?

Chaka Khan: Actually, I wrote that song because Prince and I wasn’t in the studio and we were talking about who saw the right God and he was saying to me: “Don’t you have a memory of something?“ And, yeah, I seemed to remember something spiritually. I don’t know. It was so clogged up and so unclear and I just have more of a feeling about stuff. But there was a memory of coming from someplace else or something like that. So I wrote those lyrics based on that conversation. It wasn’t about a person.

Scifi: What about The Drama? Was that something you experienced?

Chaka Khan: Yeah, that was kind of based on an experience of a relationship I just got out of.

Scifi: I’ve experienced The Drama myself.

Chaka Khan: Okay. Actually, many people have. Many people relate to that song.

Scifi: I take it Betcha Eye is about having pride?

Chaka Khan: It is. To have a good love, you have to have some sort of love for yourself or even pretend that you do to keep the other person interested in you. They say “ooh, what is it about her that you like so much? I wanna know this.” And that’s what interests other people in you, if you act like you have self-love.

Scifi: So if you like yourself, people will notice that?

Chaka Khan: Yeah. They wanna be in that. It’s a place they wanna be.

Scifi: In the song Betcha Eye, you end up dismissing the other person.

Chaka Khan: Mhhm. Eventually that is usually what it comes to.

Scifi: So do you think that sense of pride is self-destructive?

Chaka Khan: No, because it’s not self-destructive to start a new relationship or to break one off. Sometimes it’s in your best interest. One conscious thing we did about the CD was trying to make it like a relationship. The first song, Come 2 My House, is “okay, let’s have a date”. The second song is a confessional: “This is my life, this is what I am, are you still interested?” And then, you know, down to breaking up or whatever.

Scifi: Are you gonna have more collaborations with the Artist?

Chaka Khan: Yeah. Well, maybe. I hope so. That would be nice. We work well together. Working with him on this CD was fantastic. We did the whole CD in three weeks, writing it and recording it. So it was like working with myself. It went so fast, that it was over, like, it’s finished. We didn’t want it to be finished. So it was good.

Scifi: Before the album was released, I saw a track listing on your web page that was different from the one you ended up with.

Chaka Khan: Well, I’d recorded a whole other CD before this one with Me’Shell Ndegeocello. She and I wrote the stuff and she played all over that CD. And David Gamson, formerly of Scritti Politti, we got together, the three of us. We did a great album. But the record company was tripping. This was about the time I was leaving the company. So I said I’d rather just hold on to this stuff and do another CD. So on my next CD I’ll get to that stuff. I’ll have to re-record it so I can own the masters, of course.

Scifi: You did a song with Prince called Pain on the Living Single Soundtrack.

Chaka Khan: Pain? Was that on the Living Single Soundtrack? I didn’t know that.

Scifi: You didn’t know it’s on a soundtrack?

Chaka Khan: For Living Single? No. I had no idea. Are you sure about that?

Scifi: I read a magazine called Uptown which always writes about what’s new from Prince.

Chaka Khan: So this is recent?

Scifi: No, this is in ’97, I think, that there was a soundtrack. I think Living Single is a television series.

Chaka Khan: Yes, it’s a TV-series, I know that. With Queen Latifah.

Scifi: And I read that on the soundtrack there’s a song called Pain that you wrote with Prince.

Chaka Khan: Actually, I didn’t write that. That was written by the girl who sings Diamonds And Pearls.

Scifi: Rosie Gaines?

Chaka Khan: Rosie Gaines and Chan Berry and Prince. They wrote that. She had a version too, though. I wonder if it’s her version or mine, because she had a good version of it, too.

Scifi: No, I think it was yours.

Chaka Khan: I’ll have to ask my sister, then. My little sister is my manager.

And speaking of her manager, she showed up to let Scifi know that his time with Chaka Khan was up. But before he was showed out, Chaka Khan kindly autographed his copy of her Come 2 My House album.

Next up for an interview was the Danish newspaper B.T. (Published on 5 April 1999). When asked about working with O(+> and Larry Graham, Chaka Khan replied “It was good. It worked. Next!” and pushed the subject aside with a hand gesture. When asked about the 1998 New Power Soul concert in Copenhagen, Chaka Khan replied: “I don’t remember that.”

In 2016, Rosie Gaines' version of Pain was released on iTunes. By then Come 2 My House, which strangely is not available on iTunes, had replaced CK as Scifi’s all-time favourite Chaka Khan album, although she also did a fine album, Funk This in 2007, that was produced by former Prince associates Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis with a few tracks featuring guitar by former Prince associate Jesse Johnson. It included a great cover of Prince’s 1987 hit Sign ‘O’ The Times.

On 23 April 2023, it was announced on Twitter: "To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the historic collaboration between Chaka Khan and Prince, Come 2 My House will be made available on all digital and streaming platforms on July 21, 2023." That didn't happen though.