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List Price: $16.97
Our Price: $13.99
You Save: $ 2.98 (18%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Strategic Marketing
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0886970902229
Format: Enhanced
Label: Strategic Marketing
Manufacturer: Strategic Marketing
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Strategic Marketing
Release Date: 2007-09-25
Studio: Strategic Marketing
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Editorial Reviews:
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Chaka Khan's Funk This showcases some of her powerful vocals and most compellings songs to date. In perfect form, Chaka has recorded both new material and covers of some tracks that are near and dear to her heart. This incredible funk album takes us back to Chaka's roots, with much of the feel and instrumentation used in her Rufus days. Includes guest artists Mary J. Blige, Michael McDonald and original Rufus member Tony Maiden.
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Customer Rating:
Summary: OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!!
Comment: If you don't already own this one, you MUST purchase it! This is the hottest Chaka production to come out in a few years. She is singing her face off! The new material is terrific and the covers are just as wonderful. Sung by anyone else these songs would be lackluster and mediocre at best, but in Chaka's extremely capable hands (or should I say, "vocal chords") each song takes on a life all its own.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is the funk-soul siren's creative rebirth.
Comment: Chaka makes her best and funkiest album for over two decades, and her powerful voice -- that first hit the airwaves with Chicago funk band Rufus in the 1970s and punched out the mighty "Ain't Nobody" and "I'm Every Woman" in the 1980s-- on this recording shines throughout.
"Funk This", which debuted at number 15 on America's top 200 album chart - her highest chart position since her first solo album in 1978 peaked at number 12 - is a return to Khan's purity.
Recorded in analogue, it's how she sounded before the "I Feel for You"-style disco anthems of the '80s.
The album opens with an autobiographical song she co-wrote with Terry Lewis. Over the slap-wristflick of retro-funk, Chaka recalls growing up fast in "Chi-town" where her "Momma was strict about them kids".
The vocals are tight and scratchy-raw. They capture the pent-up frustrations of a young girl whose curfew meant she was "Missing the funk of the night".
The mid tempo dancer "Back In The Day" has that Rufus sound to it, and that is also evident in the covers of two Rufus classics "Pack'd My Bags/You Got The love" featuring Tony Maiden.
The funky mid tempo dancers "Superlife" , "Sign Of The Times" and "Hail To The Wrong" keep up the pace, whilst the melodic mid tempo floater "One For All Time" is also classy.
Most of Khan's musical heroes are women: she's particularly effusive on the subject of her friend Joni Mitchell, who she says is "a genius and always just a beat away from funk." The new album features a cover of Mitchell's "Ladies' Man", on which Khan pours the ache of personal experience into lines such as: "Couldn't you just love me like you love cocaine?"
The beat ballads "Angel" and the raunchy version of "Foolish Fool" are also good. On "Angel", Chaka works through of her own drug use. "Troubled little angel," she sings "inconsistent flying blind most of the time/ Drama Queen/ Preening and untangling the feathers in her wings/ Captured by her dreams desperately she sings".
"Funk This" is a mixture of originals and covers of some of the best Rhythm and Blues, Funk, Blues, and Soul music from the past thirty to forty years.
One of the songs to show off her delicacy of touch is her cover of the Jimi Hendrix's "Castles Made Of Sand". A mid-tempo song about the impermanence of dreams and the dangers of living in a fantasy world, where Ms. Khan utilizes her voice to help generate a mood appropriate to the song.
This song is also a good example of her ability to put the song ahead of her ego instead of making it about her and her talents. While younger, less mature singers will look for any excuse to unload pyrotechnics and show off their abilities, Chaka is content to let the mood of the song dictate her performance. Listening to her duet with up- and-coming powerhouse singer Mary J. Blige on the most exciting track of the album "Disrespectful" that difference is made perfectly clear. The song is a Blige composition.
"It's the kind of song two women can really sing together," says Khan, who admits that when she listens to the track now she can hardly tell where her voice ends and the younger singer's begins.
You certainly wouldn't want to be the man on the receiving end of this duo. As the jerky beat smacks you round the face, Blige and Khan take total control of the song and the relationship it describes. "You can't make me lose my mind," they roar. "I'm too strong for you".
Also amazing is Chaka's versatility as a singer as demonstrated by the range of material that "Funk This" has to offer : from the full throttle Funk of the opening track "Back In The Day" to the ballad "Angel".
She shows that slowing the pace down does nothing to detract from her sincerity as a singer.
Too often people with strong voices become stentorian when faced with a ballad and equate emotion with loudness and straining for the upper regions of the scale.
Music icons like Chaka Khan are often stifled by the pressures of delivering a successful album to their fans.
"Funk This" is an album for all skeptics.
Through the preparation for this album, Chaka has admitted that she has "been on a little journey in the last few years".
Sometimes the path to re-discovery leads us back to where originally we began. Chaka Khan's "Funk This" reminds us why we fell in love with her over 30 years ago.
The reason is because she's hopelessly...FUNKY !
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best Chaka Yet!!!
Comment: Every song on this album reminds of Chaka back in the day when she was with Rufus. Unbelievable this Album is great!!!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not Bad
Comment: "Funk This" is Chaka's Grammy-winning return to the music scene, her first studio album in almost 10 years. I am one of Chaka's biggest fans and was really looking forward to this. I must say, it's not nearly as good as the rest of her solo catalog. Chaka does not possess the kind of pipes she had on "The Woman I Am" so the performances on "Funk This" come off a bit restrained. Most of the stand-out cuts here happen to be the original material. "Angel" is quite simply stunning! "Will You Love Me" and "Hail To The Wrong" are terrific little dance dittys. "Disrespect", however, finds Chaka out of her zone. Clearly, this was produced with Beyonce in mind. She and Mary J. Blige yell through the entire song. And why Chaka would want to make a Beyonce-sounding record is beyond me.
The other half of the CD include cover songs, which really drag the CD down. The only standout is her duet with Micheal McDonald on "You Belong To Me". Originally a boring ballad recorded by Carly Simon and later by Anita Baker, Khan and McDonald kick it up a notch and turn it into a foot-tapping, midtempo tune. "Sign Of The Times" is an interesting remake but the lyrics are very out-dated. The rest of the covers are simply not that good. The remake of her own classic "You Got The Love/Pack'd My Bags" was okay, but when an artist starts remaking their own songs, it's usually a sign of a career that is in trouble.
Another issue I had with this CD is some of it sounded really old-fashioned with the 'wah-wah' voice box or whatever they call it. That kind of stuff played out in the early 80's. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad album in any way. It's just not one of her better ones. However, I am glad that it finally put her back on the charts (after a serious mis-step with 2005's "Classikhan") and added a couple more awards to her mantle.
Customer Rating:
Summary: FUNK DIVA
Comment: This will end up in your funk favs for sure. Still one of the most original soul vocalists to ever record.
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