Angie Stone was a wise singer who deeply understood the power of love and lust
Angie Stone was no overnight success. By the time 2001's Mahogany Soul made her a star, she'd logged two decades in the game, starting out in pioneering all-girl rap trio the Sequence, before passing through went-nowhere R&B groups like Devox and Vertical Hold and writing and singing with other artists (including D'Angelo, her former lover and father of their son, Michael). Once Clive Davis's Arista Records signed her in 1999, those years of experience set her apart from the neo-soul pack, having worn a powerful grain into her rich, agile voice, and steeping her music in soul's deep history.
Her debut for Arista, Black Diamond, retooled lush 70s soul for the new century: Green Grass Vapors – a love song to the sweet leaf with Stone 'higher than the Thunder Dome' – was from the same funky swamp as D'Angelo's Chicken Grease, its smouldering guitar like a moaning panther. A remarkable reading of Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man, meanwhile, mastered the track's breathless, staccato chorus without breaking a sweat, channelling Gaye's existential agonies with every holler to an oblivious lord.
But it was Mahogany Soul – her first for Davis's new label, J Records – that announced Stone's true arrival. It opened with Soul Insurance, backing singers bending the hook to Lady Marmalade around Stone like armour as she delivered a fearsome rap like Caught Up-era Millie Jackson, hard and wise but with a heart ready to get broken again. The 75-minute epic celebrated good men (Brotha) and spiritual forebears (If It Wasn't), and served up gritty memories of her years of pre-fame struggle (20 Dollars); More Than a Woman was a wonderfully sinful slow-jam with Calvin Richardson. But the album soared highest when Stone skimmed the painful depths of love – What U Dyin' For? sought to liberate good women from bad men, while her signature anthem Wish I Didn't Miss You, repurposed O'Jays' Backstabbers to deliver a new classic rumination on love's eternal sting.
Stone was now a contemporary of the neo-soul uprising led by friends and collaborators D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and Musiq Soulchild, but her age and experience gifted her music a superior weight and authority. Follow-up Stone Love opened with an a cappella riff on the Supremes' titular hit and then quickly revisited the boudoir where Mahogany Soul's charmed break-ups and make-ups occurred (on Stay for a While, a delectably slow-burn suite of longing and lust, Stone got carnal with Anthony Hamilton over molasses-sweet swing). Elsewhere, Stone's classic sensibility negotiated the new era – Lovers' Ghetto lifted the same Dynasty sample Camp Lo rode for their cult hit Luchini (This Is It), while the joyous I Wanna Thank Ya paired Stone with Snoop Dogg.
Stone relocated to the reborn Stax Records for 2007's The Art of Love and War, a perfect home for an artist so steeped in soul and funk's 70s glory days. The album offered killer duets with legends Betty Wright (on Baby, a storming repudiation of a man who's left his former lover behind now he's hit the big time) and James Ingram (My People, a lithe update of Stevie Wonder's Black Man). It was Stone's highest-charting LP, but her next, 2009's Unexpected, stumbled. If Stone sounded uncharacteristically disengaged throughout its upbeat bangers, she probably was; her father had died shortly before production began.
Unexpected didn't trouble the Billboard 100, and Angie exited Stax to find herself adrift in a disrupted industry. But while the albums that followed never matched Mahogany Soul's triumphs, the deep cuts were golden. Forget About Me, from 2015's Dream, evoked D'Angelo's offset groove while taking potshots at her former lover. Full Circle in 2019 served up Dinosaur, a squelchy swamp of dark funk wondering 'where did the good ones go? They're on the verge of extinction', and Grits, where Stone played a frank sex therapist: 'You call it smashin'/ What about passion?'; 'Tell that boy to stir like grits / circular motion / nice and slow'. Meanwhile 2023's Love Language peaked with The Gym, a final, beautiful duet with longtime foil Musiq Soulchild. In these moments, you can hear the glory of Mahogany Soul echoing, the promise of further brilliance. And it's a compounding tragedy that last night's terrible accident has deprived us of any more of Stone's magic.
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2 days ago
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Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said that Stone died surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments. Formed in 1966-67, Sly And The Family Stone were the first major group to include black and white men and women, and well embodied a time when anything seemed possible – riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The singers screeched, chanted, crooned and hollered. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk. Sly's time on top was brief, roughly from 1968-1971, but profound. No band better captured the gravity-defying euphoria of the Woodstock era or more bravely addressed the crash which followed. From early songs as rousing as their titles – I Want To Take You Higher, Stand! – to the sober aftermath of Family Affair and Runnin' Away, Sly And The Family Stone spoke for a generation whether or not it liked what they had to say. Stone's group began as a Bay Area outfit featuring Sly on keyboards; Larry Graham on bass; Sly's brother, Freddie, on guitar; sister Rose on vocals; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini on horns; and Greg Errico on drums. They debuted with the album A Whole New Thing and earned the title with their breakthrough single Dance To The Music. It hit the top 10 in April 1968, the week the Rev Martin Luther King was murdered, and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time. Led by Sly Stone, with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades, mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio. Everyday People, I Wanna Take You Higher and other songs were anthems of community, non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit, built around such catchphrases as 'different strokes for different folks'. The group released five top 10 singles, three of them hitting number one, and three million-selling albums: Stand!, There's A Riot Goin' On and Greatest Hits. For a time, countless performers wanted to look and sound like Sly And The Family Stone. The Jackson Five's breakthrough hit I Want You Back and The Temptations' I Can't Get Next To You were among the many songs from the late 1960s that mimicked Sly's vocal and instrumental arrangements. Miles Davis' landmark blend of jazz, rock and funk, Bitches Brew, was inspired in part by Sly, while fellow jazz artist Herbie Hancock even named a song after him. 'He had a way of talking, moving from playful to earnest at will. He had a look, belts, and hats and jewelry,' Questlove wrote in the foreword to Stone's memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), named for one of his biggest hits and published through Questlove's imprint in 2023. 'He was a special case, cooler than everything around him by a factor of infinity.' In 2025, Questlove released the documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden Of Black Genius). Sly's influence has endured for decades. The top funk artist of the 1970s, Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton, was a Stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and The Black Eyed Peas were among the many performers from the 1980s and after influenced by Sly, and countless rap and hip-hop artists have sampled his riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and the Roots. 'Sly did so many things so well that he turned my head all the way around,' Clinton once wrote. 'He could create polished R&B that sounded like it came from an act that had gigged at clubs for years, and then in the next breath he could be as psychedelic as the heaviest rock band.'
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2 days ago
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Sly Stone, leader of funk revolutionaries Sly And The Family Stone, dies aged 82
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Rhyl Journal
2 days ago
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Sly Stone, leader of funk revolutionaries Sly And The Family Stone, dies aged 82
Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said that Stone died surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments. Formed in 1966-67, Sly And The Family Stone were the first major group to include black and white men and women, and well embodied a time when anything seemed possible – riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The singers screeched, chanted, crooned and hollered. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk. Sly's time on top was brief, roughly from 1968-1971, but profound. No band better captured the gravity-defying euphoria of the Woodstock era or more bravely addressed the crash which followed. From early songs as rousing as their titles – I Want To Take You Higher, Stand! – to the sober aftermath of Family Affair and Runnin' Away, Sly And The Family Stone spoke for a generation whether or not it liked what they had to say. Stone's group began as a Bay Area outfit featuring Sly on keyboards; Larry Graham on bass; Sly's brother, Freddie, on guitar; sister Rose on vocals; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini on horns; and Greg Errico on drums. They debuted with the album A Whole New Thing and earned the title with their breakthrough single Dance To The Music. It hit the top 10 in April 1968, the week the Rev Martin Luther King was murdered, and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time. Led by Sly Stone, with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades, mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio. Everyday People, I Wanna Take You Higher and other songs were anthems of community, non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit, built around such catchphrases as 'different strokes for different folks'. The group released five top 10 singles, three of them hitting number one, and three million-selling albums: Stand!, There's A Riot Goin' On and Greatest Hits. For a time, countless performers wanted to look and sound like Sly And The Family Stone. The Jackson Five's breakthrough hit I Want You Back and The Temptations' I Can't Get Next To You were among the many songs from the late 1960s that mimicked Sly's vocal and instrumental arrangements. Miles Davis' landmark blend of jazz, rock and funk, Bitches Brew, was inspired in part by Sly, while fellow jazz artist Herbie Hancock even named a song after him. 'He had a way of talking, moving from playful to earnest at will. He had a look, belts, and hats and jewelry,' Questlove wrote in the foreword to Stone's memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), named for one of his biggest hits and published through Questlove's imprint in 2023. 'He was a special case, cooler than everything around him by a factor of infinity.' In 2025, Questlove released the documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden Of Black Genius). Sly's influence has endured for decades. The top funk artist of the 1970s, Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton, was a Stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and The Black Eyed Peas were among the many performers from the 1980s and after influenced by Sly, and countless rap and hip-hop artists have sampled his riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and the Roots. 'Sly did so many things so well that he turned my head all the way around,' Clinton once wrote. 'He could create polished R&B that sounded like it came from an act that had gigged at clubs for years, and then in the next breath he could be as psychedelic as the heaviest rock band.'
