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Sunday 18 December 2022

Angie Stone - A Profile


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
2009 - Unexpected
2012 - Rich Girl
2015 - Dream
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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