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The Guardian
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Angie Stone obituary
Angie Stone, who has died aged 63 in a traffic incident, was an American soul singer and songwriter. She rose to international prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s with two albums, Black Diamond and Mahogany Soul, that spawned a pair of popular singles, No More Rain and Wish I Didn't Miss You. Eight further solo albums displayed Stone's command not just of soul but of gospel, R&B and funk, often in collaboration with other songwriters and artists, including Prince (U Make My Sun Shine, 2001), Snoop Dog (I Wanna Thank Ya, 2004), Anthony Hamilton (Stay for a While, 2004) and Betty Wright (Baby, 2007). Stone had first come to light in the late 70s as a member of the Sequence, a pioneering hip-hop trio whose much sampled 1979 single Funk You Up is generally cited as the first rap record released by an all-female group. Once the Sequence disbanded she spent a number of years struggling for a further breakthrough until she became a member of the R&B trio Vertical Hold in the early 90s and then released Black Diamond in 1999, after which she never had to fight for recognition again. Stone's rich vocal dexterity on Black Diamond drew comparisons with Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight, and the album made it to No 46 on the US charts, eventually selling close to 1m copies. Its standout track, No More Rain, which portrayed the defiant upswing in mood that often follows the emotional depths of a break up, reached No 1 on the US Adult R&B single charts and made a big splash in Europe, too. In similar but more vulnerable vein, Wish I Didn't Miss You, from Mahogany Soul (2001), made an even greater impact in various parts of the world, including as a Top 30 hit in the UK. The album, which peaked at No 22 in the US, also generated four other singles and contained a version of Curtis Mayfield's Makings of You that became a sublime staple of her many live shows. Stone was born Angela Brown in Columbia, South Carolina. An only child, she grew up with her mother, a nurse, and her father, a cab driver, in the city's Saxon Homes housing project, where she sang in the local Baptist choir and was a keen cheerleader at CA Johnson high school. She was academically successful, a good athlete and a notable basketball player. With two other members of the cheerleading squad, Gwendolyn Chisholm and Cheryl Cook, she had begun to write her own stock cheers, and in time their rap-like material took on a more musical direction, encouraging them to form the Sequence. Fans of the Sugarhill Gang, one of the early rap outfits that had emerged from the New York area in the late 70s, in 1979 they blagged their way into a Gang gig in Columbia, where they found themselves backstage singing their own compositions to the group's manager, Sylvia Robinson. She was so impressed with Funk You Up that she had them in a recording studio within a few days, and the song swiftly became a landmark release in the first wave of 'old school' hip-hop. According to Rolling Stone magazine, 'in a 70s landscape where the few rap records that existed were chorus-free rhyme marathons, the Sequence seamlessly mixed singing and rapping, unwittingly paving a lane for artists such as Lauryn Hill, Drake and Future'. Over the next six years the Sequence toured widely alongside the Sugarhill Gang, making three albums and releasing 10 singles. But they were unable to recreate the success of Funk You Up, and in 1985 they split when Stone refused to renew what she saw as an exploitative contract. By that time she had married the rapper Rodney Stone from the group Funky 4 + 1, and had taken his surname. Earning money by writing songs for other artists, including Jill Jones, Mantronix and Lenny Kravitz, she supplemented her income by working as a factotum at Kiss-FM radio station in New York, where she eventually met the musicians Willie Bruno and David Bright, with whom she formed Vertical Hold. Although the group disbanded in 1995 after two albums, they had a US R&B chart hit in 1993 with Seems You're Much Too Busy, which was co-written by Stone and Kurtis Khaleel. By then divorced, in the second half of the 90s Stone co-wrote songs with the emerging R&B singer D'Angelo (Michael Archer), with whom she had started a long-term relationship, until the years of hard slog finally culminated in a solo recording contract that led to Black Diamond and much wider acclaim. Stone's most commercially successful albums were her third, Stone Love, in 2004, which reached No 14 on the US charts, and her fourth, The Art of Love, in 2007, which made it to No 11, after which she continued to release new collections of material at regular intervals until her final album, Love Language, in 2023. In the later part of her career, however, some of Stone's attention had turned to acting, including on Broadway as Mama Morton in the musical Chicago (2003) and with small roles in movies such as The Hot Chick (2002), The Fighting Temptations (2003), Pastor Brown (2009), Scary Movie V (2013) and Ride Along (2014). A popular live artist, she was due to be touring the UK this year. The road collision that led to her death took place in Montgomery, Alabama, as she was returning from a concert in nearby Mobile. She is survived by a daughter, Diamond, from her marriage to Stone, a son, Michael, from her relationship with Archer, and two grandchildren. Angie Stone (Angela Laverne Brown), singer and songwriter, born 18 December 1961; died 1 March 2025
Roya News
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Roya News
Angie Stone, R&B singer, dies in tragic accident at 63
Angie Stone, 63, the celebrated soul and R&B singer known for hits such as 'No More Rain (In This Cloud)' and 'Wish I Didn't Miss You,' tragically passed away Saturday morning in a vehicle accident. Stone was returning to Atlanta, Georgia, after a performance in Mobile, Alabama, when the accident occurred while she was traveling in a Sprinter van with nine others. Details regarding the condition of the other passengers involved in the collision have not been disclosed at this time. 'Angie Stone's voice and spirit will live on forever in the hearts of those she touched,' her spokeswoman stated. 'Details regarding memorial services will be announced by the family in due course.' Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Stone launched her four-decade career in the entertainment industry in the late 1970s as a member of The Sequence, one of the pioneering female rap groups known for their hit 'Funk You Up.' She later transitioned into neo-soul and R&B, releasing acclaimed albums such as 'Black Diamond' in 1999 and 'Mahogany Soul' in 2001. In a 2020 interview with 'The Breakfast Club,' Stone reflected on her diverse career and her ability to thrive across various musical genres before it became commonplace for artists to achieve crossover success. 'I was self-taught. I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was ambitious,' she expressed. 'It's having that bug that says, 'I'm a rubber band. You can stretch me, but I won't pop. I'm going to always do me.'' Stone received her first Grammy nomination for the track 'More Than a Woman' from her album 'Mahogany Soul,' recognized in the best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal category. Her song 'U-Haul' from her 2004 album 'Stone Love' earned her a nomination for best female R&B vocal performance. In 2007, she received her final Grammy nod for the song 'Baby' from her album 'The Art of Love & War.' In addition to her music career, Stone was also an accomplished actress, boasting over 40 screen credits. She appeared in notable television shows such as 'Girlfriends,' for which she sang the theme song, and 'Moesha,' as well as films like 'The Hot Chick,' 'Scary Movie V,' and 'Ride Along.' She had one project in post-production, titled 'Abused.' Just weeks prior to her passing, Stone shared her thoughts on her career and future projects in a heartfelt social media post. 'I've been in the game for 50 years. My first solo album is 25 years old. I've put in a lot of work over the years,' she wrote on Instagram. 'God gave me this gift, and I have shared it with the world. Even at this point, I am asking my creator what is next because I have so much more to give.'
The Guardian
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
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.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Singer Angie Stone killed in car crash after leaving Alabama performance
(WGHP) — Singer-songwriter Angie Stone, who rose to fame as a member of the female hip–hop trio The Sequence, has died in a car crash, the Associated Press confirmed Saturday. She was 63. Music producer Walter Millsap III told AP Stone left a performance in Alabama early Saturday morning, and that the artist was riding in the back of a vehicle that 'flipped over and subsequently hit by a big rig.' Millsap told AP he learned the news from Stone's daughter, Diamond, and The Sequence member Blondy. Will Demi Moore be the first Best Actress from a horror film in 14 years? Following her days with The Sequence, Stone embarked on a solo career, releasing her debut album 'Black Diamond' in 1999. In 2001, Stone released her second album, 'Mahogany Soul,' which spawned the international hit single 'Wish I Didn't Miss You.' In addition to three Grammy Award nominations, Stone's accolades include two Soul Train Lady of Soul Award wins in 2000 and an Edison Award for her third album, 'Stone Love,' in 2004. On Friday night, Stone performed at the Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association's Grand Marshall's Ball, held at the Arthur R. Outlaw Convention Center in Mobile. As reported by Nexstar's WKRG in Mobile, the association released a statement following the news, saying in part: 'Angie's performance at the 2025 Grand Marshal's Ball was nothing short of phenomenal. Her talent captivated everyone in attendance, and her presence truly elevated the event. Never could we have imagined that it would be the last time we would have the honor of witnessing her perform. The news of her passing has left us all deeply saddened, and we will always cherish the memories of her incredible talent and warm spirit.' The AP reports Stone was scheduled to perform at the halftime show during the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association men's championship basketball game on Saturday. A moment of silence was held in Stone's honor at the game. The Associated Press contributed to this story. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Angie Stone, Hip-Hop Pioneer Turned Neo-Soul Singer, Dies at 63
Angie Stone, a hip-hop pioneer in the late 1970s with the Sequence, one of the first all-female rap groups, who later switched gears as a solo R&B star with hits like 'No More Rain (In This Cloud)' and 'Wish I Didn't Miss You,' died on Saturday in Montgomery, Ala. She was 63. Her agent, Deborah Champagne, said she died in a hospital after being involved in a car crash following a performance. Alongside musicians like Erykah Badu, Macy Gray and Lauryn Hill, Ms. Stone was part of the neo-soul movement of the late 1990s and 2000s, which blended traditional soul with contemporary R&B, pop and jazz fusion. Her first album, 'Black Diamond' (1999), was certified gold, as was her sophomore effort, 'Mahogany Soul' (2001). A prolific songwriter with a sultry alto voice, Ms. Stone specialized in songs that combined laid-back tempos with layered instrumentation and vocals. 'Angie Stone will stand proud alongside Lauryn Hill as a songwriter, producer and singer with all the props in place to become a grande dame of the R&B world in the next decade,' Billboard magazine wrote in 1999. By then, Ms. Stone was an industry veteran — not only as a singer, but also as a songwriter for, and collaborator with, some of her era's biggest acts. She first emerged as a member of the Sequence, which she formed in 1978 with Cheryl Cook and Gwendolyn Chisolm. It was the first female group signed to Sugar Hill Records, the label that put rap on the map with the single 'Rapper's Delight' (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang. The trio lasted only a few years, but in that time it released several seminal rap singles, including 'Funk You Up' (1979) and 'Funky Sound (Tear the Roof Off)' (1981), which have been sampled by Ice Cube, En Vogue, Dr. Dre and other artists. Ms. Stone then spent more than a decade as a songwriter, backup singer and band member for prominent acts like Mary J. Blige, Lenny Kravitz and D'Angelo. She was busy, and successful, but she found the anonymity of working behind the scenes frustrating. 'I knew it wasn't my talent, because everybody wanted a piece of me for something,' she told The Los Angeles Times in 2000. 'After a while, I started to feel used. I thought, 'If I'm good enough to help Mary, and to do this and that, what is the problem?'' Part of the issue was timing. Ms. Stone had been a member of two R&B acts, Vertical Hold and Devox, in the early 1990s, but their sound was considered out of sync with the mainstream. It was only after breakout hits by the likes of Ms. Hill and Ms. Badu later that decade that Ms. Stone received the attention she thought she deserved. 'I really think that I was ahead of my time," she told The Associated Press in 1999. 'My music caught up to time, or time caught up to my music.' Angela Laverne Brown was born on Dec. 18, 1961, in Columbia, S.C. She started singing at an early age at her church, where her father, Bobby Williams, a lawyer's assistant, was part of a gospel quartet. Her mother, Iona (Brown) Williams, was a hospital technician. In 1979, Ms. Stone, Ms. Cook and Ms. Chisolm sneaked backstage at a concert in Columbia where Sylvia Robinson, a founder of Sugar Hill Records, was seated. They auditioned then and there, and Ms. Robinson, impressed, said she would sign them to her label. They moved to New York and began recording. Ms. Stone's marriage to Rodney Stone, who performed under the stage name Lil' Rodney C with the rap group Funky Four Plus One, ended in divorce. She is survived by her daughter from that marriage, Diamond Stone; a son from her relationship with D'Angelo, Michael D'Angelo Archer II; and two grandchildren. Ms. Stone had Type 2 diabetes, and she spoke openly about her efforts to lose weight. In 2006, she appeared on the television show 'Celebrity Fit Club,' losing 18 pounds over the course of the season. She branched out into acting in the 2000s, with roles in 'The Hot Chick' (2002), with Rob Schneider; 'The Fighting Temptations' (2003), with Cuba Gooding Jr.; and 'Ride Along' (2014), with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube. Onstage, she appeared as the prison matron Mama Morton in the Broadway production of 'Chicago' in 2003. She also had small roles in several TV series, including 'Girlfriends,' starring Tracee Ellis Ross, for which she sang the opening theme. Ms. Stone recorded 10 studio albums, most recently 'Love Language' (2023). Among the 11 tracks is 'Old Thang Back,' which features her son, who performs under the name Swayvo Twain.
