CHAKA KHAN – "I Feel For You"

Hurray! This is glorious.

What is fantastic about it is the sense of space that allows all of the thrilling effects to be spotlit to their full extent, especially the lightning bolt stabs of synth. On paper, the team-up of talents – Chaka, Prince, Stevie, Melle Mel – sounds like a potential supergroup mess, but actually the two cameos really act as support to Chaka. Few vocals convey as much sexiness and liberation as the “Wooah Wooah Woww! I FEEL!”

I always wondered about how much of a supporting role Melle Mel played at the time – It’s not exactly like a lovesong, more like he’s an internal monologue in her head telling her how hot she is as she prepares to meet her desired other.

This was extremely popular with all of my 11 year-old peers who liked pop music – my new school being a lot more inner-London and multiracial than I’d experienced before. I remember several of the more confident and cocky boys attempting the rap in class between lessons.

I didn’t join in. I knew my place.

I came here hoping you gave Chaka high marks and I was not disappointed.

And we should add a fifth name to the team: Arif Mardin, who produced this gloriously thrilling piece of work. Gosh, all those major talents on a Number One single; how could a stellar roll-call like that ever be topped? (He asked warily, glancing bunnywards.)

I taped this off the radio before it hit the shops – most likely from Robbie Vincent’s Radio One soul show – and played it over and over again, adoring it without reservation. As for its role in hip hop history: hmm, not sure that it had much of a role to play, to be honest. Melle Mel’s guest rap didn’t have much in common with the hip hop of the day, which had yet to fully unshackle itself from the electro wagon. So if we’re looking for the big forward-pointers of 1984, I’d nominate Run DMC’s “Rock Box” and UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne”…

OK, I found a relevant quote from Khan in The Rock Yearbook 1986:

“For five years I have been going into the studio, really working at creating masterpieces, mixing jazz and rock and funk. So now I do this song [I Feel For You] and put rapping on it–which really is the pits! The lowest thing you can do, from an artist’s standpoint.”

I think this STFU statement alone is the primary reason I’ve never explored her beyond this song and the obvious Rufus/solo hits: I can’t trust an artist with such off-kilter self-regard.

A terrific song – one of the first I encountered where the sense of sonic thrill and novelty felt so seismic…I’m talking about the vocals there as much as anything else from the inspired, instantly iconic stutter intro to Chaka’s ecstatic wail towards the end. Dancefloor devastation on a Billie Jean level? Sounds like it to me altho this was never quite THAT ubiquitous. 9.5!

Interesiting Michael re #6 – maybe that explain why I love it. As great as her voice sounds to me it’s not the standout feature of the track as everything seems to be operating in full effect but not to the extent that it’s at war with itself.

Wow, I’m surprised to see such a warm reaction here; I’d remembered this as a fairly minor song, although it reached number four in Australia. Re-watching it reminds me of my main problem with it: that Chaka seemed such an anonymous presence, her vocals overshadowed by the rest of the production. She’s pretty static in the video, too. I had been unaware of her previous hits, and didn’t twig to Prince’s and Stevie’s involvement, so this didn’t feel like much of an event to me at the time.

That said, it’s fascinating to see how meaningful this was and is to so many of you. Maybe a better-than-YouTube-quality recording would better reveal its charms. For now, a 5 from me.

Re 9: She’s hardly the first singer to have woeful taste in their own music: just one more reason not regard the artist as the ultimate authority on their work.

The record (I was about to say the song, but of course the song is just a fraction of it) is an absolute classic. If various of the previous number ones have brought up discussions about what was bad about music in the mid-’80s, this is definitely what was great about music of the time.

Yes, ’tis brilliant. So many catchy bits that all fit seamlessly together. I just lurve the way Chaka drawls in that seductive, yet slightly ditzy manner ‘I…..I think love ya’ before Melle Mel goes back into the ‘Chakakhanletmerockyouchakakhan’ rap.

Billy, #4 Le Bon was never the slimmest, but that’s a bit harsh!

Re 16: “the palatial splendour of nu-school R&B, not quite (at this stage) emergent […] the actual real 90s were still a long way away”

Well, (have done a Bunny check), we’re less than a year and a half away from Control, which I would say was the nu-school R&B fully emergent, and also connects (via the producers) directly to the starting point for the sound of the 00s as described in Tom’s terrific Pitchfork essay.

Hmmm I was going to pose the question would this have got to number one without the rap at the beginning but given the eulogies above it’s obvious what the answer would be.

Arif Mardin added the rap without Chaka’s involvement and as pointed out earlier she hated it and had to be talked round into keeping it on the track.

I can’t hear it now without recalling Morris Major and The Minors’ “Stutter Rap” (I’m guessing those above hated that) which rendered it as “Chuck A Can” – so stupid it’s brilliant. Morris Major of course was Tony Hawks whose books I’d thoroughly recommend particularly “Round Ireland With A Fridge”.

But I digress. This meant that, like Vince Carke, Prince got to the top as a writer long before he managed it as a performer. In his case of course he did it twice.

Like Rosie this isn’t my kind of music but I do find it less annoying than the next one to feature a Wonder harmonica solo.

mike@22: ok my kashif-love is a bit perverse

as for bad decisions, yes, this is part of the same thing think: it’s like the spark-gap between the theatre actor generation and the cinema actor generation — there’s an epoch of singers who were terrific in real space (and studio-ups thereof) and a successor epoch of singers terrific in collage space, and a lost generation queuing up to be great at the former just as it went out of style… what’s interesting about hendryx and labelle and khan is that they’re all pretty no-nonsensy in-control-of-their-own-lives types; and this was a quality that somehow worked against them? (whitney on the other hand: hoo boy)

‘whatever happened to Narada Michael Waldren?

I think I saw him on a soul documentary (maybe even Soul Brittania? hmm) a couple of years ago. I like ‘Divine Emotions’ 🙂

i’m having my paradigm shifted here, ma! if asked i’d always have said this was a good record but i now realise i’ve never really given a moment’s thought to it, not least in not twigging that prince was involved, let alone mellie mel. (i’m pretty sure i worked stevie out). i haven’t heard it in ages and can’t while i’m at work, but as i read all this more and more of the record is coming back to me and in my head at least it’s sounding more and more brilliant. can’t wait to see whether this is a genuine revelation or if i’m just easily led.

I have the 12″ of ‘Divine Emotions’. Can’t remember the last time I played it though, might sound a bit rubbish now.

i’m quite sure that i’ve posted on FT about this song before…? maybe not.

this is, i think, my favourite number one ever, with wuthering heights running a close second. it can transport me straight back to 1984. love the bit especially where it breaks down in the middle and chaka says “i…i think i love you”. as close to perfect as any record could ever get.

i thought i remembered that green gartside was somehow to be involved, thanks to the folks above for confirming

hi mike, i edited my comment after scrolling thru and reading yours. classic case of being too keen to post my own comment before reading the others first! [i am a dufus.]

#35 – Pete did a review of this for the Top 100 Tracks of All Time list.

ha ha “do the band stuff”. this is also my understanding of what goes on in a recording studio. and that bloke on the other side of the glass with the big machine? apparently he does something too.

That´s a brilliant description of Prince´s original version of this song – and in fact I think ´goofy self discovery´sums up the whole of the album it came from, 1980´s ´Prince´, his second album. Nowhere near as sophisticated as his later stuff, it´s still one of my favourites just due to the sense of an artist having fun throughout. I also bet he had no idea that the song could be made this much better by a cover – and this wouldn´t be the last time, although the bunny prevents me from discussing the next time an artist took a throwaway Prince track, made it their own and took it to the top.

Well, I’ve just listened to this again and I’m not the wiser about what’s going on here. Maybe this here mp3 version wot I have acquired isn’t the same thing that everybody else is hearing. What I’m picking up is a lot of full-frontal electronic noise, smeared with a nice bit of Stevie Wonder-ish harmonica (is it really him playing it? Did he know about it at the time?) and interspersed with a chap rapping on Chaka Khan’s name, while pushed somewhere in the distant background is Ms Khan singing as if in the studio changing room shower.

Is this how it is or have I missed something?