Chaka Khan
Funk's most imitated voice belonged to a band singer first. Yvette Marie Stevens took the name Chaka Khan and fronted Rufus from the early 1970s, and the run of hits that came out of that partnership, Tell Me Something Good, Sweet Thing, Do You Love What You Feel and the platinum-certified Ain't Nobody, is why the phrase Queen of Funk attached itself to her and stayed. Her solo debut produced the number one R&B single I'm Every Woman, and What Cha' Gonna Do for Me followed.
None of that is what a screen credit list can show, which is the usual problem when a singer's page is assembled from film roles. Her screen work is occasional and mostly consists of being herself: a choir soloist in The Blues Brothers, an early appearance on the syndicated Rock Concert, an interview in the documentary SLY LIVES!, and a version of Chaka Khan in Beyond the Lights.
The exceptions are the voice roles. She is Henrietta in The One and Only Ivan and turns up as a cartoon of herself in a Phineas and Ferb special, both of which use the voice as an instantly recognisable object rather than as a performance. The records are the career. The films are where the records went to be acknowledged.
Movies (5)
TV (2)
Music (1)
Where to start with Chaka Khan
Watch The Blues Brothers before anything else. The sequence is short, she is the soloist lifting a church scene that a hundred films have tried to copy since, and it explains the entire reputation before you have finished your coffee.
Beyond the Lights is the better film around her, a music-industry drama with a real ear for what the business does to singers, and she appears as herself. SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) is the serious one, a documentary about Sly Stone in which her presence works as a witness statement rather than a cameo.
For the voice, The One and Only Ivan gives her an actual character to play and Phineas and Ferb: Summer Belongs to You! is a cheerful cartoon in-joke. Rock Concert is archive material and the only place here to see her performing in the decade the reputation was built.