They are both owners of the indisputably irresistible combination of exotic looks, powerful vocals and timeless music. They both belt out soul-aching ballads that connect with audience’s sensibilities — Chaka with “Through the Fire” and Keyshia through “Heaven Sent” as examples.
Khan and Cole have both emerged victorious despite personal trauma that may have toppled weaker souls. Chaka tearfully told her audience recently that she has been drug-free for five years. Cole’s poignant tale of extreme familial dysfunction connected with fans on a visceral level on BET’s hit reality show “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is.”
Chaka Khan, the Grammy-winning songstress and headliner of the Capital Jazz Festival in suburban Washington DC, shares a musical kinship with sultry songstress Keyshia Cole.
Their brutal honesty and round-the-way spirit makes the diminutive divas beloved and relevant figures in the über-influential hip-hop era.
Khan came up in the game during what many hip-hoppers and other urban sophisticates call the greatest era of pure soul music, the 1970s. There’s no question that Cole would have thrived during that era.
Both women have connections to the most revolutionary black organization ever produced. Cole was reared in Oakland, Calif., where the Black Panther Party was founded in 1966, and she strides through life with the demeanor and beauty of a panther.
Khan, born Yvette Marie Stevens and raised on Chicago’s South Side, was inspired to adopt the African name “Chaka” while volunteering for the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program for children.
Khan’s “I Feel for You” was a monstrous 1984 where you could sense her vulnerability in sharing her feelings for her man. Keyshia Cole accomplishes the same in the riveting ballad “I Should Have Cheated.”
Cole sends chills racing up the spine with the heartfelt “You Complete Me,” sharing her vulnerability, much like Khan did with “Ain’t Nobody” back in the 1980s.
–terry shropshire
