“I was a kid, so they really just had me selling the Panther paper on the corner, barefoot in jeans. Her father remarried, to a civil rights activist who encouraged Khan to speak at rallies by the age of 14, she had been recruited by the Black Panthers. The weed was thick in the air, the wine bottles were flowing, music was playing – as tight as it was, I had a pretty magical life.” You have to grow up in a specialised community, which mine was.” Her mother was a strict Catholic, but her father was a beatnik: “My sister and I used to go on his nocturnal excursions by the lake in the park. She was born Yvette Stevens 65 years ago in Hyde Park, a progressive, bohemian, racially mixed “island amid the madness” of 50s and 60s Chicago: “A great city, very rich in terms of the arts, but it’s so racist it’s hard get to the friggin’ arts if you’re black. It is certainly an unexpected turn of events, but nothing about Khan’s life or career seems straightforward. And now here we are, talking about Gogglebox and The Chase. Khan was telling me that she was less aware of her influence than she might be, because she doesn’t really listen to music at home, preferring to relax in front of the telly. Its sound is based on an intricate knowledge of her back catalogue – the vivid funk she recorded with Rufus 40 years ago, the effervescent disco of her early solo albums, the electronic dance-pop of her biggest hits – and given a subtle 21st-century makeover. It is audibly the work of people who, as Khan puts it, “made it abundantly clear that they didn’t have to Google me”.
A minute ago, we were talking about her vast influence over modern music, something that is evident from her new album, Hello Happiness, a collaboration with the producers Sarah Ruba and Switch, the latter best known for his work with MIA and Major Lazer. It goes without saying that I didn’t expect to end up discussing Bradley Walsh when I arrived to interview Khan, a woman who could call herself the Queen of Funk without much fear of starting an argument.
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