Chaka Khanissoul music's ranking tomboy. Her hard-edged sexual exuberance, which owes as much to rock as to gospel, is the basis for an intriguing but limited vocal personality that can easily slip into shrill self-parody. Choosing Arif Mardin, that paragon of highclass pop-soul taste, to produce Chaka, Khan's first solo album apart from Rufus, was shrewd, since his aristocratic elegance offers a necessary counterbalance to her wild impetuosity.

Not surprisingly, Mardin monumentalizes the singer's voice in a variety of R&B settings from funk to disco, with classic, Aretha Franklin-like gospel/R&B the stylistic median ("Love Has Fallen on Me," "Some Love"). If Khan sounds somewhat naive and overeager compared to the Queen of Soul, she's no slouch either. What she lacks in grandeur, she almost makes up for in sheer, sassy verve, and Mardin's settings are characteristically immaculate.

Khan turns Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson's "I'm Every Woman" into a memorable theme song, punching out its brittle, swooping phrases against a rhythmically scored string chart and hard disco beat. This stunning production, one of very few disco records designed for listening as well as dancing, is a small landmark. The LP's other highlight, "Roll Me through the Rushes," is a spiritual zinger whose lush, mural imagery provides the perfect backdrop for Chaka Khan to strut her exotic-urchin personality. Here, she achieves an emotional depth only hinted at on earlier albums. (RS 283)

STEPHEN HOLDEN