Skip to main content

Creativity Quote by Chaka Khan

"There are a lot of people I would have liked to have collaborated with, and would still like to"

About this Quote

It’s the kind of sentence that sounds casual until you hear the discipline inside it. Chaka Khan isn’t name-dropping; she’s staking out an artistic posture: the work is never finished, and the horizon stays open. The repetition - “would have liked” and “would still like” - collapses past and present into one ongoing appetite. That’s not nostalgia. It’s momentum.

The intent reads as generous and strategic at once. As a vocalist who helped define funk-soul’s crossover era, Khan has spent decades being treated like a “completed” legend: celebrated, sampled, boxed into a greatest-hits narrative. This line quietly refuses that. It insists she’s not a museum piece; she’s a working musician with unfinished conversations she wants to have. Collaboration becomes a way to keep her sound in circulation, but also a way to keep herself surprised - a performer’s hedge against becoming an imitation of her own myth.

The subtext is also about power. Collaboration in pop is rarely neutral; it’s commerce, branding, access. When Khan frames it as personal desire rather than industry calculus, she reclaims agency. She doesn’t say she missed opportunities because of gatekeepers, sexism, label politics, or timing - all plausible in her career arc. She simply signals that her taste extends beyond her resume, and that curiosity outlives the era that first canonized her.

Context matters: in a streaming age that rewards cross-generational features, this reads like an invitation without desperation. Not “please call,” but “I’m still here, still hungry, still game.”

Quote Details

TopicMusic
SourceHelp us find the source
More Quotes by Chaka Add to List
Chaka Khan on Collaboration and Possibility
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Chaka Khan (born March 23, 1953) is a Musician from USA.

21 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes