The gowns. The power. The unmistakable voices.
At 81 and forever fierce, Patti LaBelle and Chaka Khan continue to ignite every stage they touch, not just with jaw-dropping vocal runs but with a lifetime of resilience, royalty, and pure soul magic.

When Patti LaBelle steps into the light in 2025, the air itself seems to bow. She is 81, yes, but time has only polished the diamond. The hair is still sky-high, the gowns still sequined sermons, the eyelashes still batting like butterfly wings in a hurricane. And when she opens her mouth, the same four-octave miracle that once shattered chandeliers on The Oprah Winfrey Show still slices straight to the soul. Only now it carries the weight of eight decades: every loss, every comeback, every prayer answered and unanswered.

Chaka Khan, turning 72 this year but looking like she discovered the fountain of funk in 1974 and never left, stands beside her like fire standing next to thunder. The red curls are wilder, the cheekbones higher, the voice still a growl-to-soar rollercoaster that makes grown men cry and women scream “Tell it!” from the cheap seats. Together they are not nostalgia. They are a living masterclass in how to age like gods.

Their 2025 Queens Tour, co-headlined with Gladys Knight, is less a concert series and more a coronation on wheels. Opening night at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in May was church, coliseum, and coronation all at once. Patti floated out in a crimson cape that could eclipse the sun, launching into “Lady Marmalade” like it was 1974 and she had something brand-new to prove. The audience, three generations deep, lost their natural minds when Chaka followed with “I’m Every Woman,” hitting that whistle note so clean the rafters shook. Then the two locked eyes, grinned like mischievous sisters, and tore into a never-before-heard mash-up of “You Are My Friend” and “Through the Fire” that left mascara running in rivers down every cheek in the building.

But 2025 has been more than sold-out arenas. Patti’s sweet-potato-pie empire is now a full grocery line, LaBelle Legacy Foods, gluten-free, diabetic-friendly, and still so good Walmart can’t keep the pecan pies in stock. She dropped a surprise gospel EP in February, Still I Rise, recorded live at her Philadelphia church with a choir of teenagers who grew up streaming her on TikTok. The title track, a duet with a 19-year-old viral sensation named Trinity Rose, has already soundtracked half a million graduation videos.

Chaka, meanwhile, quietly became the elder stateswoman of neo-soul. Her March 2025 album Chaka Khan & Friends: The Funk Resurrection features collaborations with Anderson .Paak, H.E.R., and a reimagined “Ain’t Nobody” with Thundercat that broke Spotify’s R&B chart within hours. She spent the summer curating her first-ever Chaka Khan Funk Festival in Chicago, headlining herself at 2 a.m. and shutting the city down until sunrise. Critics called it “Glastonbury for grown folks.” Chaka called it “Tuesday.”

Their sisterhood is the real headline. They’ve known each other since the early ’70s, when Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles and Rufus featuring Chaka Khan shared bills at the Apollo. They’ve cried together over lost sisters (Patti’s three to cancer, Chaka’s battles with addiction and grief), prayed together in dressing rooms, and roasted each other mercilessly on red carpets. When Chaka entered rehab in 2016, Patti was the first voice she heard on the other end of the phone: “Baby, the stage will wait. You come back when you’re whole.” When Patti collapsed onstage in 2020 from undiagnosed diabetes, Chaka flew to Philly and sang “On My Own” at her bedside until she woke up laughing.

In 2025 they’re finishing each other’s sentences again, this time on purpose. Their joint podcast, Two Queens, One Mic, launched in January and immediately shot to No. 1 on Apple charts. Episodes range from hilarious (a 45-minute debate on whether sequins or feathers photograph better) to gut-wrenching (Patti recounting the night her sister Jackie died in her arms, Chaka revealing she still keeps her mother’s last voicemail on an old flip phone). The chemistry is pure church-lady-meets-nightclub-realness, and the downloads prove the world is starving for unfiltered Black woman magic.

They’re mentors now, whether they asked for the job or not. At every tour stop they bring up local girls, some barely 16, for a “Pass the Crown” segment. Patti teaches breath control; Chaka teaches attitude. When a shy 17-year-old from Detroit cracked on a high note during soundcheck, Patti stopped the band, walked over, and said, “Baby, Aretha cracked. Whitney cracked. I crack every night. That’s how you know the feeling is real. Do it again, louder.” The second take brought the house down, and Chaka slipped the girl a backstage laminate that read “Future Headliner.”

And the voices? Lord have mercy, the voices. Patti’s still hitting that stratospheric E6 in “If Only You Knew” like it’s nothing. Chaka’s still growling through “Sweet Thing” like she’s making love to the microphone in front of your mama and daring you to look away. Together they close every show with “Over the Rainbow” — Patti starting fragile and broken, Chaka answering with fire, until they meet in the middle and harmonize on a note so pure it feels like forgiveness made audible.

The gowns change nightly. The power deepens. The voices, somehow, impossibly, get richer.

In a world obsessed with youth, Patti LaBelle and Chaka Khan are the loudest, fiercest reminder that real soul doesn’t expire. It ferments. It ripens. It becomes vintage thunder.

Eighty-one and forever fierce.
Still serving.
Still slaying.
Still the blueprint.

And darling, the Queens are just getting warmed up.