3 worlds, 1 week: Chaka Khan, Mon Laferte and M Huncho.

Where does one start when describing a music giant like Chaka Khan? Just Google "Queen of Funk" and see who pops up.

Born in Chicago to a family of artists, Chaka Khan began her singing journey in church before performing in a girl group, The Crystalettes, at 11 years old. At 17, after leaving home, she began performing at bars, where the band Rufus saw her and asked her to join them. As the band’s lead vocalist, they earned multiple Grammy Awards and number-one hits. Soon after, she went solo, releasing her debut album, Chaka, and lead single "I'm Every Woman", launching a five-decade-long career that includes 23 studio albums and more than 2,000 recorded songs.

During her career she has worked with every legend you can think of, to name a few; Stevie Wonder, Prince, Joni Mitchell, and Whitney Houston. She's lived in different countries and new cities, learning new languages along the way. On set, she broke out in fluent German, surprising our entire team, showing us how she continues to pull inspiration from wherever she is.

Five decades in, she's still adding to the legacy; one that includes classics like “Through the Fire,” a love-soaked ballad where Chaka sings about finding a love so powerful she’s ready to put it to any test. This week, she sang it on our stage, before performing an unreleased, new song that we’ll share with you in the coming weeks.

While Chaka's a legend you may have rediscovered this week, Mon Laferte may be an artist you're hearing for the first time.

Like Chaka Khan, Mon Laferte is a rebel in her own right.

Born Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte in Viña del Mar, Chile, she came from a family of artists; even her earliest memory is rooted in music, singing along as her grandmother played guitar. By five she was already inventing her own stories through songs and poems, and at ten she won her first guitar in a singing contest. At 13, she began music school, and a year and a half later she chose to leave to busk and perform around Valparaíso, learning music on her own terms.

At 26, a thyroid cancer diagnosis forced her into surgery and pulled her away from music. At that time, Mon Laferte faced the possibility that music, the place where she'd always felt most connected to her art, might be slipping out of reach, making peace with letting her music career go. But she beat the odds, adopted the name Mon Laferte, and rebuilt herself into an artist who blends pop, rock, blues, and Latin folk into something entirely her own. Decades later, she performs “Gigante” for her COLORS SHOW, the song born from that hospital bed, with peace, knowing she’s still here.

Where Chaka Khan and Mon Laferte wear their emotions on their sleeve, M Huncho wears his behind a mask.

The North-West London artist built his sound by fusing melody with rap in a way the UK drill scene hadn’t heard before. M Huncho broke out in the UK drill scene in 2017 on the online freestyle series Mixtape Madness’s Mad About Bars, where his performance tapped into a genre he’s coined “trap wave”; a sonic style he continued to expand, inspiring other artists to create music within the genre.

In 2022, there was a major shift in M Huncho’s life, he became a father. He’s stated being a father is the biggest force reshaping his outlook on life, something that marked a turning point that led him to leave his label and go independent.

Since leaving his label, M Huncho went on a steady run of releases.

Independent, self-distributed, and deliberately faceless, he wears his mask as a philosophy, not a gimmick. That philosophy runs through his COLORS SHOW, “Cowardly Lion,” where he calls out performative bravery while weighing in on real-world tragedies affecting the people of Sudan and Palestine. Behind the mask, he offers the idea that the privacy his armour gives him allows for his vulnerability. He’ll prove that conviction on stage as a headliner at TONES of LDN in September.

At the end of the week, a lifelong Chaka Khan fan might have discovered Mon Laferte, drawn in by the same refusal to be confined to one genre. M Huncho’s hip-hop fans might learn that the voice behind "Through the Fire" is the same one sampled on Kanye West's "Through the Wire”, and follow that discovery back into her endless catalogue that shaped a generation, all because they shared the same stage.

This week, chances are you: excitedly watched an artist you love perform one of their greatest songs, and fell down the rabbit hole researching an artist you’ve just discovered.

However you got here, whichever artist pulled you in — we're glad you're here.