Laila Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer
Grammy-nominated R&B singer Angie Stone has passed away at the age of 63. Stone died Saturday morning as the result of a car crash in Montgomery Alabama. Stone’s voice resonated with many artists and her career spanned generations of music. She first entered the music scene professionally in the late 1970s as a member of the hip-hop trio The Sequence. The group was one of the first all-female groups to release a rap single, “Funk You Up” which came out in 1979. Stone is also remembered for her vocals as part of the R&B group Vertical Hold which debuted in the 1990s.
Stone gained popularity with a new generation of fans during the emergence of the neo-soul era of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This era featured popular songs such as “No More Rain” and “Wish I Didn’t Miss You.” Neo-soul is a mix of contemporary R&B and soul with other genres like hip-hop and jazz. Stone’s popularity grew with the popularity of other neo-soul artists such as Erykah Badu and Musiq Soulchild. Her two children expressed shock over her unexpected death in a joint statement that was shared by Stone’s publicist. In their statement, they said, “Never in a million years did we ever expect to get this horrible news. Our mom is and will always be our everything,” said her daughter, Diamond Stone, and her son, Michael Archer, who Stone shared with singer-songwriter D’Angelo. “We are still trying to process and are completely heartbroken.”
