Angie Stone, a Grammy-nominated R&B singer and songwriter who found success as part of the 1990s neo-soul movement after nearly two decades in the music business, died early Saturday in a traffic accident in Alabama, according to CNN. She was 63.
Her death was confirmed by a representative, Yvonne Forbes, who told CNN that Stone had been traveling in a van after performing in Mobile, Ala., when the van was involved in a collision.
As a teenager growing up in Columbia, S.C., Stone formed the hip-hop trio the Sequence, which landed a recording contract with Sugar Hill Records; she later formed a group called Vertical Hold and wrote songs for and performed with the likes of D’Angelo, Lenny Kravitz and Mary J. Blige. Yet Stone didn’t break out widely until 1999 with the release of her debut solo album, “Black Diamond,” which earned rave reviews on its way to being certified gold and spun off the hit single “No More Rain (In This Cloud),” which topped Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart for 10 weeks. In 2002 she scored another big hit with “Wish I Didn’t Miss You,” which has more than 136 million streams on Spotify.
Both songs embodied the hand-played ideals and throwback spirit — “Wish I Didn’t Miss You” prominently sampled the O’Jays’ early-’70s “Back Stabbers” — that made stars of fellow neo-soul artists such as Erykah Badu, Maxwell and D’Angelo after years in which R&B had moved steadily closer to the flash and attitude of hip-hop.
In a 2000 interview with The Times, Stone said Lauryn Hill “broke the mold” with her Grammy-winning 1998 LP, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” “Our society is so image-conscious, and she said that it’s OK to be natural and beautiful and sing about something with substance,” Stone said.
This story will be updated.
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