Good Morning POU! That time Chaka sent Stevie back to the drawing board!
In an interview with The Independent on Tuesday, June 11, the “Queen of Funk,” 71, recalled a time when she shut down Stevie Wonder while working on music.
Chaka Khan tells the story of how Stevie Wonder came up with “Tell Me Something Good.” pic.twitter.com/IAKyIDNhyE
— travis’s video soul. (@travisfromdabk_) November 4, 2022
While Khan’s funk band Rufus was working on the follow-up to their eponymous 1973 debut LP, the legendary singer-songwriter, 74, offered the group one of his unrecorded songs at the time — “Come and Get This Stuff.”
“And I told Stevie, ‘I don’t like it – what else you got?’,” the “Sweet Thing” singer said.
When asked how often she believed Wonder heard that kind of feedback, Khan replied: “I don’t think he ever heard that at all. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I just tell the truth all the time, and I can’t help it.”
She continued: “It upsets people sometimes. But hell, if the truth upsets you I can’t really help that.”
Luckily, the “Isn’t She Lovely” performer wasn’t mad at her.
“Stevie said, ‘What’s your birth sign?’ Aries. ‘Oh, I got the song for you…’ And then he started playing that ‘wakka-wakka’ on the keyboard, and – bam! – there it was,” Khan recalled.
That eventually became Rufus’ hit single “Tell Me Something Good,” which was penned by Wonder and landed in Billboard’s Top 3 in 1974.