Angie Stone

Angela Laverne Stone, born Angela Laverne Brown on December 18, 1961, in Columbia, South Carolina, was an American singer-songwriter, rapper, actress, and record producer whose career spanned more than four decades. She was the daughter of Iona Williams, a hospital technician, and Bobby Williams, a lawyer's assistant and gospel singer. Stone attended W.A. Perry Middle School and C.A. Johnson High School in Columbia, and sang her first solo as a member of the choir at First Nazareth Baptist Church. She died on March 1, 2025.

Stone entered the music industry in 1979 under the stage name Angie B., when she and childhood friends Gwendolyn Chisolm and Cheryl Cook formed The Sequence after meeting Sugar Hill Records CEO Sylvia Robinson backstage at a Sugarhill Gang concert. Robinson signed the group as the label's first female act. Their debut single, "Funk You Up," released in December 1979, peaked at number fifteen on the Hot Soul Singles chart and was among the first original hip-hop songs released without sampling. The group's 1980 debut album, Sugarhill Presents The Sequence, received positive critical notices. A self-titled second album followed in 1982, peaking at number fifty-one on the Black LPs chart, and a third album, The Sequence Party, arrived in 1983. The group disbanded in 1985 following a royalty dispute with Robinson, after which Stone briefly worked at Kiss-FM radio in New York. She adopted the surname Stone from her first husband, Rodney "Lil' Rodney C" Stone, and began performing under the name Angie Stone.

After leaving Sugar Hill Records, Stone was introduced through a studio engineer to musicians David Bright and Willie Bruno Jr., a collaboration that eventually produced the R&B and hip-hop quartet It's Us, later renamed Vertical Hold. The group released their first single, "Summertime," in 1988 on Criminal Records before signing with A&M Records. In 1990, Stone performed as saxophonist on Lenny Kravitz's Let Love Rule Tour. Vertical Hold's debut album, A Matter of Time, appeared in June 1993, peaking at number thirty-three on the US Top R&B Albums chart and selling more than 62,000 copies in its first week. The lead single "Seems You're Much Too Busy" reached number seventeen on the US Hot R&B Singles chart. Through a songwriting deal arranged via their parent label Universal Records, Stone contributed to D'Angelo's debut album Brown Sugar. In early 1995, she vocally arranged "Freedom (Theme from Panther)," the theme song for the film Panther, and later that year toured as a background vocalist on D'Angelo's Brown Sugar Tour. One performance from that tour, recorded at Jazz Café in London on September 14, 1995, was later released as D'Angelo's live album Live at the Jazz Cafe in 1998. Vertical Hold released their second and final album, Head First, in May 1995, before parting ways at the end of that year. In 1996, Stone became a featured vocalist for the group DeVox, formed by Gerry DeVeaux and Charlie Mole, releasing an album exclusively in Japan that attracted the attention of Arista Records A&R manager Peter Edge and led to a solo recording contract.

Stone made her Broadway debut in 1996 in the musical Chicago, returning to the production in 2003 to play the role of Big Mama Morton, which also marked her stage debut in that capacity. Chicago, based on the 1975 play of the same name, has been one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history, and Stone's appearance in the production represented a significant extension of her work beyond the recording studio.

Her debut solo album, Black Diamond, was released on Arista Records in September 1999. It peaked at number forty-six on the Billboard 200 and number nine on the US Top R&B Albums chart. The lead single "No More Rain (In This Cloud)" reached number fifty-six on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent ten weeks at number one on the US Adult R&B Songs chart. Black Diamond was certified gold by both the RIAA and the British Phonographic Industry. Stone won Best Solo R&B/Soul New Artist and Best Solo R&B/Soul Single at the 2000 Soul Train Music Awards for the album and its lead single. After moving to J Records, she released Mahogany Soul in 2001, which produced the hit single "Wish I Didn't Miss You." Stone Love followed in 2004, and The Art of Love & War arrived in 2007, becoming her first and only album to reach number one on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Her total solo sales exceeded five million records worldwide, and she earned two gold-certified studio albums over the course of her career.

Stone made her film debut in the 2002 comedy The Hot Chick and subsequently appeared in The Fighting Temptations (2003), Pastor Brown (2009), and School Gyrls (2010). Her television credits included VH1's Celebrity Fit Club and TV One's R&B Divas. Her accolades included two Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, an Edison Award, and nominations for three Grammy Awards and three Soul Train Music Awards. In 2021, she received the Soul Music Icon Award at the Black Music Honors, and in 2024 she was inducted into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame.