Angie Stone

Vinyl Discography:

Biography:

Angie Stone is a hip-hop pioneer and neo-soul catalyst with a prolific career spanning four decades. A singer, MC, self-taught keyboardist, prolific songwriter, and arranger, Stone first rose to prominence as a member of the Sequence, a trio that emerged with “Funk You Up” (1979), their second release on Sugar Hill Records and the first rap single by an all-female group. After a brief stint with the post-new jack swing R&B act Vertical Hold and a briefer stint with the group Devox, Stone embarked on a dynamic solo career as one of neo-soul’s leading stars, known for her sharp insights into romantic relationships with her smoky yet open voice. She re-established herself with a pair of gold albums, Black Diamond (1999) and Mahogany Soul (2001), and added further accolades with Grammy nominations in the R&B field for “More Than a Woman” (2002), “U-Haul” (2004), and “Baby” (2007). Stone has continued to record every few years while occasionally acting. On deeply soul-rooted LPs like Dream (2015), Full Circle (2019), and Love Language (2023), she works closely with a core group of collaborators, including producer/manager Walter Millsap III.

Stone, born Angela Laverne Brown, began singing gospel music as a child at First Nazareth Baptist Church in her hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. Her father, a member of a local gospel quartet, took his only child to see gospel artists like the Singing Angels and Gospel Keynotes perform. Throughout her childhood, she wrote poetry, played sports, and after high school, she was offered a basketball scholarship. While working dead-end jobs, Stone began saving money to record her own demos at the local studio PAW. She joined Gwendolyn Chisholm and Cheryl Cook in the rap trio the Sequence, who recorded hits for Joe and Sylvia Robinson's Sugar Hill label. These included "Funk You Up," a remake of Parliament's hit "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker," called "Funky Sound (Tear the Roof Off)," and "I Don't Need Your Love." Soon after, Stone collaborated with artists including Mantronix, Vanessa Paradis, and Lenny Kravitz. She formed the sophisticated R&B trio Vertical Hold, which reached number 17 on Billboard's R&B/hip-hop chart in 1993 with "Seems You're Much Too Busy." The group disbanded after their second album was released in 1995, the same year Stone wrote, recorded, and sang backup with D'Angelo, appearing on his breakthrough debut, Brown Sugar. Around this time, Stone also began working with Devox, who released an album in Japan in 1996 and the following year released the widely distributed single "Everyday," co-written by Stone and D'Angelo.

Stone then signed with Arista as a solo artist and recorded Black Diamond in 1999, a top ten R&B album that went gold thanks to the singles "No More Rain (In This Cloud)" and "Everyday" (one of several songs she wrote for or with D'Angelo). The album earned her a pair of Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards. She moved on to J for 2001's Mahogany Soul, also certified gold. "More Than a Woman," a duet with Calvin Richardson, earned her a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Stone Love, released in 2004, performed just as well commercially, with its highlight being "U-Haul," another Grammy-nominated performance. Stone smoothly transitioned to the revitalized Stax label for her fourth studio album, 2007's The Art of Love & War. The album topped the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and featured two of her best singles, "Sometimes" and the Betty Wright collaboration "Baby" — the latter of which earned Stone a triple Grammy nomination.

Over the next few years, the singer's studio output remained consistent in terms of chart performance, despite a series of label changes and extensive acting work. (Towards the end of the 2000s, she appeared in several films, including The Fighting Temptations, Pastor Brown, and Scary Movie 5, as well as the television shows Moesha, Girlfriends, and Lincoln Heights.) Unexpected, released by Stax in 2009, reached the Top 20 of the R&B/hip-hop chart with a slick and funky sound. Saguaro Road, Stone's most stylistically diverse set, released three years later and peaked slightly higher. For Dream, a number three R&B/hip-hop album released in 2015, she joined Shanachie's veteran roster and reconnected with producer and artist manager Walter Millsap III, a Stone Love collaborator with whom she would continue to work closely. The collaboration also established lasting creative partnerships with fellow songwriters Candice Nelson, Balewa Muhammad, and Teak Underdue. The following year, the Goldenlane label released Covered in Soul, for which Stone updated classics popular with the Guess Who, the Five Stairsteps, and Carole King. With the support of Millsap's Conjunction Entertainment imprint, Stone returned in 2019 with Full Circle, featuring the Jaheim duet "Gonna Have to Be You." Conjunction then signed a licensing deal with SoNo Recording Group, which yielded Stone's refined Love Language, a 2023 release featuring "The Gym," a duet with Musiq Soulchild.