Latest news with #VerticalHold
USA Today
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Beyoncé pays tribute to Angie Stone: 'Your incredible legacy will live on'
Beyoncé pays tribute to Angie Stone: 'Your incredible legacy will live on' Show Caption Hide Caption Angie Stone dead at 63 R&B singer Angie Stone died at 63 in a fatal rollover crash on Interstate 65 near Montgomery, Alabama. Musician Angie Stone died in a car crash Saturday. Stone was a member of the groups The Sequence and Vertical Hold, and also had a successful solo career. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter paid tribute to Angie Stone after the music legend tragically died in a fatal rollover crash. The "Cowboy Carter" creator updated her website with a sweet message in honor of the late singer following her death on Saturday. "Thank you for your voice, your strength, and your artistry. Your incredible legacy will live on forever. Rest in peace, Angie Stone," Beyoncé's official site now reads. Stone died in a car wreck while traveling with members of her band from Mobile, Alabama, to Atlanta when their van collided with a semitruck. Stone had performed at a Mardi Gras event in Mobile on Friday night, according to the Mobile-Area Mardi Gras Association. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, the three-time Grammy nominee rose to prominence in the 1970s as a member of female rap group The Sequence before a solo career that produced hits like "Wish I Didn't Miss You." Stone was also a member of the '90s R&B trio Vertical Hold. In 2003, Beyoncé and Stone both starred in the movie "The Fighting Temptations." Stone was 63. Follow Caché McClay, the USA TODAY Network's Beyoncé Knowles-Carter reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @cachemcclay.
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
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Soul singer Angie Stone dies in a car crash at 63
Singer Angie Stone, known for her hit Wish I Didn't Miss You, has died at the age of 63. A representative for the singer confirmed to Variety that Stone was killed in a car crash in Montgomery, Alabama. She had reportedly been on her way home from a show and was the only person who died in the crash. Her daughter Diamond Stone wrote online: 'My mommy is gone.' Stone has been a founding member of groundbreaking female hip-hop trio the Sequence in the late 70s at the age of 16. They scored a hit with Funk You Up, a song that was later sampled by Dr Drew for his single Keep Their Heads Ringin and Bruno Mars in Uptown Funk. 'I think that being the first female rap group to actually come out and have an authentic original rap record is an accomplishment that no one else has been able to top,' she said in 2023. After the group disbanded in the mid-80s, Stone worked as a vocalist for Vertical Hold and then Devox before she later provided songwriting credits to D'Angelo for his first two studio albums. She was also a backing vocalist for the singer on tour before providing vocals for Lenny Kravitz on his album 5 in 1998. In 1999, Stone released her first solo album, Black Diamond, which contained the hits No More Rain (In This Cloud) and Life Story. She went on to record the theme to the hit sitcom Girlfriends in 2000 and released her second album, Mahogany Soul, the following year. That album featured the hit Wish I Didn't Miss You, which became her biggest international success. Her third album, Stone Love, featured the song I Wanna Thank Ya with Snoop Dogg, which became a big hit in Europe. The video also featured a young Idris Elba. Stone went on to record a further seven albums, the most recent of which was 2023's Love Language, which featured Musiq Soulchild and Stone's son Swayvo Twain. She was nominated for three Grammys in her career and also wrote songs for Erykah Badu and Raphael Saadiq. 'There is a deep sad feeling that as a songwriter – something such a gift – you never get acknowledged for it,' she said in 2011. 'People think that's how I eat because I make records but I make far more money as songwriter than from being a singer.' Stone also worked as an actor, with roles in big screen comedies like The Hot Chick and The Fighting Temptations and on stage in Chicago playing Big Mama Morton.
