Chaka Khan speaks up about the pitch shift that Kanye did to her voice in his 2003 debut single ‘Though the Wire’.
The Queen of funk Chaka Khan gave us the rhythmic and soul ’80s hits I’m every woman and I feel for you has spoken out about the fact that she was never aware of the alteration that was going to be made on the sample of her voice for Kanye’s song Through the wire.
Chaka Khan told Good Day DC that she and Kanye never spoke about how he took her voice and meddled with it without her permission and has since claimed that the sped-up sample of her 1985 song Through the fire made her sound like a classic high-pitched chipmunk.
“[Kayne] didn’t mention that he was gonna speed it up, you know, three times its normal speed,” Khan said. “Had he, I would’ve had something to say. But since I didn’t think of that, believe me, I think of it now. I ask, ‘How are we gonna do this?’”
Khan recalled how Kanye had personally called her up and told her about his admiration for her and how he wanted to sample her voice. He was in the hospital at the time after a car crash when he had recorded the song, which moved Khan.
She asked if he was a singer to which Kanye replied ‘No, no. I just wanted to use your chorus.’ She had a think about the collaboration and came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t be able to taint her song or voice because it’d be her voice, so she agreed.
However, after hearing the final product when the song was released, Khan wasn’t happy. “he found a way. By golly, he found a way to frick that up. I was through.”
Khan’s most recent album was 2019’s ‘Hello Happiness’. The singer is yet to announce further details.
