Angie Stone
(Angela Laverne Brown 18 Dec 1961) was born in Columbia, SC, on this
day in 1961 and is therefore celebrating her 61st birthday. As with so
many artists, she cut her teeth on gospel music. She began her singing
career as a sixteen year old Angie B. in female hip hop trio The Sequence with Sugar Hill
Records in 1979.
They recorded three albums for the label and had three Top 40 R&B
hits. By 1985 The Sequence had disbanded and she then worked with
Mantronix before becoming a member of trio Vertical Hold who
released two albums in 1993 and 1995 and registered four hits on the
R&B chart, all minor save for "Seems You're Much Too Busy" which
reached #17 in 1993.
Her next appearance was as a member of Devox in 1996 who released one
album that was only available in Japan ("Devox Featuring Angie B.
Stone") and a handful of singles. She contributed song writing credits
for D'Angelo's first two albums ("Brown Sugar" (1995) and "Voodoo"
(2000)) and also toured with him as backing vocalist. Stone dated D'Angelo in the 90s and they have a son together, Michael
D'Angelo Archer II, born in 1998. In addition, she was also a backing singer for Lenny Kravitz, who is
a cousin of Gerry Deveaux who she was in Devox with.
At the end of the decade she was signed to Arista by Clive Davis and
released her acclaimed debut solo debut "Black Diamond" (1999) on
Arista Records. It contained the song "No More Rain (In This Cloud)"
that sampled Glady's Knight & The Pips' "Neither One Of Us" and
was an instant success on the modern soul scene. For her sophomore
album she followed Davis to his newly formed J Records and released
"Mahogany Soul" in 2001. The album's second single "Wish I Didn't Miss
You" was another sampler using the backing from The O'Jay's
"Backstabbers".
In 2002 Stone appeared in an episode of "Girlfriends" as a
singer singing the title theme and "The Hot Chick" and in 2003 The
Fighting Temptations". Since then she's appeared in another eight
movies as well as TV series and theatre productions.
To date she has release nine solo studio albums since 1999.
However, since her highest charting album "The Art of Love & War"
(released on the reinstated Stax label in 2007 which reached #11) two
have not charted at all and two didn't break into the Top 100. Her
singles haven't fared well either on the Hot 100 with only three
entering but all but six have done reasonably well on the R&B
chart with two #1s, six top 10s and ten top 20s from 23 singles.
Album Discography
The Sequence
1980 - Sugarhill Presents the Sequence
1982 - The Sequence
1983 - The Sequence Party
Vertical Hold
1993 - A Matter Of Time
1995 - Head First
Devox
1999 - Devox Featuring Angie B. Stone
Angie Stone
1999 -
Black Diamond
2001 -
Mahogany Soul
2004 -
Stone Love
2007 - The Art of Love & War
2009 -
Unexpected
2012 - Rich Girl
2015 -
Dream
2016 -
Covered in Soul
2019 -
Full Circle
It was enlightening revisiting her albums and it was difficult narrowing
the playlist down to even 30 tracks, but I think these are some of the best
with probably may others left behind owing to space. I encourage you to
revisit them if you haven't for while. They are all available on Spotify
(links above) except "Rich Girl".
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1 comment:
She has a concert in the UK in 2023. Thinking about going.
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