Happy 30th Anniversary to Chaka Khan’s eighth studio album The Woman I Am, originally released April 14, 1992.
At the dawn of the ‘90s, Chaka Khan was ready for a timely comeback. Her inexhaustible voice was strong as ever, but she found herself at odds with fickle trends that drove record sales since her 1984 platinum blockbuster I Feel For You. Her next release Destiny (1986) bustled with energy, but met lukewarm reception. Its mature follow-up C.K. (1988) held promise with Prince, Miles Davis, and Stevie Wonder collaborations, but went unappreciated overall.
Going for the rebound, Warner Bros. Records tried to score by issuing house interpretations of her back catalog as Life Is a Dance: The Remix Project (1990). It worked on paper, but in practice, the new versions couldn’t outshine her originals. Something needed to remind fans of Khan’s brilliance, and they say if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.
First priority was to get in tune with herself. Khan would have to take a more active role than ever overseeing her work. Next was to change environments. She expatriated to London and got to work on an impeccably slick disc, choosing all of the material herself. The resultant 13-track opus titled The Woman I Am is a high-gloss declaration of Khan’s identity, expressing a full spectrum of pop, rock, and R&B colors.
“I had begun to move to strength when I started working on The Woman I Am, officially producing myself for the first time,” she details in her autobiography Chaka! Through The Fire (2003). “I had always done that to varying degrees when it came to my vocal performance. [This] was the first time I got and took that credit.” The fiery Aries was even more frank with the Washington Post in 1992: “I was pissed off with the last album. I'd had enough of other people telling me when and what to sing.”
Despite being one of the first to fuse R&B with hip-hop on “I Feel For You,” Khan had no interest in courting rappers. She would not be washed by the tide of New Jack Swing and hip-hop. If Chaka Khan rails against anything, it’s artifice. She needed a new sound, but it had to be fresh, upscale, danceable, and most of all, authentic.
Producer David Gamson had just what was needed for the delectable first single, “Love You All My Lifetime.” Though uncannily titled like Khan & Gamson’s last effort “Love of a Lifetime” from Destiny, this new song was worlds apart. Sweeping in with wah-wah guitar, palpable pathos, and a trademark vocal wail, the tight and crisp groove immediately established that Khan’s next phase would be a bold one. While its lyrics were winter in the heart, its vibe was hot summer night from start to finish. An artful black-and-white video clip captured its wanton charm, and the cut reached #2 on Billboard’s R&B song chart and #1 Dance thanks to its remixes.
The next single “Give Me All” got a remix treatment for the UK courtesy of Chicago house legend Frankie Knuckles, though the original, written and produced by sibling duo Jerry & Katreese Barnes, needed no help. Its restrained carnality is the funk centerpiece of The Woman I Am (“I’m on fire, baby / You wanna build me up just to let me down”). Its slow-grinding swagger broods, swelters, and pants until the epilogue downshifts to a classic Honey Drippers breakbeat under Katreese’s improvisation on sax.
On the uptempo side, an underrated highlight is “I Want.” Think of it as “Give Me All,” but in an evening gown. It’s classy, but under just the right conditions it just might unzip for you. Though it sounds like a juke joint in mid-jump, virtually all of its funky instrumentation is the work of Marcus Miller with a little help from Average White Band drummer Steve Ferrone and a pithy, backwoods harmonica solo by William Galison.
Miller implements the same self-contained chutzpah on the disc’s opener “Everything Changes.” As it struts in brandishing its horns, the fanfare makes way for the queen. Khan penned its wise and forewarning lyrics with Mariah Carey hitmaker Ben Margulies (“Now I am no authority / But I’ve been around and I’ve seen a lot… / Either settle down or lose the little you’ve got”).
Though only released stateside, “You Can Make the Story Right” was a top 10 R&B single, one of Khan’s best recordings that decade, and a bittersweet final work from late producer Wayne Brathwaite. She glides in this ballad like a luxury car, gently pushing her foot to the floor for a climax. Her voice drives the plot as she pendulates between denial and painful awareness (“It’s a fact to me, but it’s fiction to you / You’ve been lettin’ me down, but I can’t give you up / I don’t want another lover”).
Living across-the-pond allowed an atypical union with German producer Ralf Zang. The lighter of his two contributions is “Keep Givin’ Me Lovin’” which Khan co-penned with Andreas Levin, Camus Celli, and vocal disciple Mica Paris. Its cascading sonics are refreshing crudités compared to heavier fare here. Conversely, the urgency of “Facts of Love” turns Khan loose on a track that combines the feel of Rufus’ “Ain’t Nobody” with Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love.”
Some offered mixed feedback about The Woman I Am telling her, “There are four songs that I really love. The rest, I don’t know.” That may be due to its adult contemporary orientation. Though some regard that genre boring, its sturdy format makes diverse influences cohesive and portable across the lines that divide radio and retail. These songs are direct descendants of “Through the Fire,” the signature pop anthem that Khan made unforgettable for her R&B audience.
The Woman I Am stays thigh-deep in these AC waters with Arif Mardin and his son Joe Mardin producing the twinkling “This Time” and “Don’t Look At Me That Way.” The senior Mardin, who Khan regards as her “musical father,” produced nearly all of her first six solo projects. The latter of the Mardins’ work, crafted by Diane Warren, showed Khan to be ahead of the curve. In only 5 years, no young starlet’s R&B album would be complete without a Warren hymn to grant them pop accessibility.
Prior to recording this disc, Khan described her state: “I think I was a little bit sad. A little bit confused with life in general, and I really just didn’t like myself much at all. I’m still learning to like myself. But I didn’t like myself at all then. I just was really not there, so now I just decided that…I just needed to start taking full responsibility for my life.”
This new and steely Chaka informs the song her album is named after. Co-written with legendary composer Brenda Russell and actress Dyan Cannon, “The Woman I Am” lays claim to the confidence she very much needed. The triumph is audible as she ascends the bridge (“I can look at myself and I’m not afraid / I have finally learned how to love / I can feel everything that I’ve never felt / And I’m sure now that I’ve always known”).
Warner released “Love You All My Lifetime,” “Don’t Look At Me That Way,” “You Can Make The Story Right,” and “I Want” as commercial singles in the US. Overseas, only the first of those two plus “The Woman I Am” and “Give Me All” were promoted commercially. “Facts of Love” also managed release in Japan after a prominent feature in a 1994 Toyota RAV 4 campaign. These singles were oft released with no music video or even proper cover art—only her name and song title on a white blank box.
Khan makes no bones about how uninvested Warner Bros. was in this project. Meanwhile, the label managed to turn “Feels Like Heaven,” Khan’s 1993 duet with Peter Cetera, into a #5 AC hit for him. Pulling no punches in her autobiography, she admits, “By and large, the public was clueless about The Woman I Am because Warner did diddly on the promo end.” Moreover, while she was touring, Warner poached Khan’s tour manager Steve Margo for a position at the label. Clearly, her team didn’t have her best interests at heart.
Nonetheless, The Woman I Am won a GRAMMY award for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female in 1993. This was Khan’s highest charting studio album in years, but it would be her last for Warner. She caught lightning in a bottle with Gamson on “Love You All My Lifetime” and aimed to further explore their partnership on her next album Dare You To Love Me. Label conflicts resulted in their work getting crushed into the conciliatory Epiphany. Meanwhile, Gamson used the sharp funk he honed with Khan to produce Meshell Ndegeocello’s Plantation Lullabies (1993) and Peace Beyond Passion (1996), two predecessors of the neo-soul movement.
The freedom Khan usurped set an important precedent. She wouldn’t fashion another studio album until she could be in control of her art. That couldn’t have happened without the lessons she wrote into “The Woman I Am” (“I had to learn to trust myself / I had to learn just when to say no”). When that happened on the Prince-produced Come 2 My House (1998), the results were spectacular and fans were reminded of Khan’s brilliance. When an artist is in tune with herself, excellence becomes easy.
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