“Ain’t nobody” needed for Chaka Khan.
The 73-year-old music icon revealed in an interview with the U.K.’s Observer newspaper published on Thursday, August 20, that she is happy on her own after going through two divorces.
Khan made the admission after being asked about the inspiration behind a lyric on her new album, Chakzilla. “I’ve been waiting all my life for this moment,” she sings on the title track.
Quizzed on what exactly it is she is waiting for, the singer responded, “I don’t want to discuss that, because if I talk too much about what I would like to have, somebody will try to arrange it for me. So I’m just going to mosey along and let life do what it do. One of them is not necessarily a partner. I’m not looking for that.”
“I’m partnered out,” Khan said candidly.
Khan married Hassan Khan in 1970 when she was 17; however, they divorced a year later. She later wed Richard Holland, with whom she shares son Damien, in 1976. The couple divorced in 1980. (Khan has been coy about Damien’s exact age. In a 2022 TikTok video to mark Damien’s birthday, she said, “Something very special happened to me on March 22, 1978, or 9. I’m not going to tell you which one. How’s that?”)
Between her marriages, Khan welcomed daughter Indira, 52, with Rahsaan Morris in 1973.
In a 2019 interview with The Guardian, the “I’m Every Woman” singer detailed how her second marriage caused tension within Rufus, the funk band she fronted in the 1970s.
“They didn’t want me to have a husband,” she said at the time. “When the band first went on tour, every night, after a gig, they would all do a walk-through of my room to make sure I was by myself. They didn’t care who it was – no one could come and visit me. They were just very possessive of their little diamond.”
In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Khan reflected on both of her marriages, revealing that they each left her questioning herself.
“I’ve been married twice. Both times I was constantly wondering which person they loved: Chaka Khan or the real me — Yvette Stevens,” she said. “It would take a man of biblical proportions for me to marry again. I don’t have time for a man unless he can bring something big to the table, like a huge amount of money.”
In the same interview, the music star said she adopted her granddaughter, Daija Jade Holland, Damien’s daughter, when she was a child. The pair share the same birthday.
“There’s a lot of things I missed as a young mom, because I was too busy growing up myself. I’m better at it now,” she recalled. “I adopted my granddaughter — my son’s daughter — when she was 9. She’s just turned 16. Becoming a mother again later in life was meant to be.”
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