What Cha' Gonna Do for Me
Chaka Khan
1981
I can convince myself to like this. I think it's important distinction to make, how there are some pieces of art that are easy to like and some that require a little bit of work, just simply due to personal preferences and past biases. You make the distinction, but the result is the same—liking something. The distinction says more about you than about the art. One, that you are even willing to do the work shows that you care deeply about this artform. Two, that you have the ability to do that work, which is not something that you're born with, but instead requires constant practice and upkeep. Three, that something can still be good even if it's not "for you," because sometimes "for you" is too easy, and we just need to stretch a little bit, and find that if we make the effort, we find something that's totally worth knowing.
I'm sitting here doing the work for Chakha Khan. 286 albums into the Year of Blind Spots project—I think these lessons are pretty clear at this point. Many of these albums are not "for me," and just require some effort, and eventually, they turn into something that is "for me." But the change happens within the self, not the album. The album is always gonna be what it is, and we need to adjust ourselves to fit the album's expectations. I think I would've dismissed Chakha Khan's music as out-of-date pop R&B for the aging masses, had I not done the work. Sometimes "doing the work" just means listening to the album a bunch of times and getting used to its style and rhythms. Sometimes you just need one song to flip the switch for you. But the important part is that you're trying.
There is a song here that flipped the switch for me, and that song is "Heed the Warning." Holy SHIT. I prioritize back-to-front great albums, but the next best thing is a good album that gifts you one all-timer. What Cha' Gonna Do for Me is of the latter variety, and immediately justifies any work that I'm putting in here. It starts out as a space-funk but then in the chorus goes widescreen glittery disco. Something about those synths resonates in my fucking soul, man. Have you listened yet? I'm crazy, right? There's no way that this thing is as good as my brain is telling me it is. And yet, it immediately secures its place on every party playlist I make for the next decade.
That alone would've justified the album's existence, but there's definitely more to it than that. The Beatles cover, the Dizzy Gillespie interpolation featuring Dizzy Gillespie, all the classic synth riffs all over this thing, the way Khan can elevate something as average as "Father He Said" into something that sounds epic, the fact that there's nothing maudlin or too slow here, how Khan really makes an effort to keep the energy levels up. Do I think this is corny? Of course. But there are times when I am able to mold myself into someone who appreciates the corny. This is one of those times.
Christ, we're like seven weeks away from completing our fifth year and 300th album for this blog column. I am definitely getting to the point where I'm struggling to say anything new or interesting about the experience of filling a Blind Spot. I've done the work, but Chaka, I'm tired. There are only so many ways to explain that I didn't know an album and now I know it and occasionally even love it. I don't know why this is the album that I noticed that I was approaching my limit. Possibly because it's a really good album and there's really nothing to talk about that I haven't talked about already. I'm just running in circles, writing about the process, and not enough about the results of that process.
Like, I just wanna get to the point where I can enjoy a classic corny-ass '80s R&B-funk on my own accord, and not marvel at the fact that I would've been met with resistance within my younger self twenty years ago. It still requires work, but that's my fault, and in order to explain the work, I have to write about myself, and I think that everyone can probably agree that that's becoming dreadfully boring.
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