Angie Stone

Angela Laverne Stone (née Brown; December 18, 1961 – March 1, 2025) was an American singer-songwriter, rapper, actress, and record producer. With a career spanning more than four decades, she has been credited with revolutionizing the sound of hip-hop and neo soul. Originally known as Angie B., she rose to fame in 1979 as a member of The Sequence, the first female music act in hip hop music. In the early 1990s, she became a member of the R&B group Vertical Hold. In late 1990s, she pursued a solo career as Angie Stone and signed with Arista Records to release her debut solo album Black Diamond (1999), which received a gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and spawned the single "No More Rain (In This Cloud)". After transitioning to J Records, she released her second album, Mahogany Soul (2001), which spawned the hit single "Wish I Didn't Miss You". It was followed by Stone Love (2004) and The Art of Love & War (2007), the latter which became her first and only number-one album on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Stone ventured into acting in the 2000s, making her film debut in the 2002 comedy film The Hot Chick, and her stage debut in 2003, in the role of Big Mama Morton in the Broadway musical Chicago. She then went on to appear in supporting roles in films and television series as well as several musical productions, including VH1's Celebrity Fit Club and TV One's R&B Divas, and movies such as The Fighting Temptations (2003), Pastor Brown (2009), and School Gyrls (2010). Her accolades included two Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards and an Edison Award, alongside nominations for three Grammy Awards and three Soul Train Music Awards. In 2021, she was honored with the Soul Music Icon Award at the Black Music Honors, followed by her induction into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2024. Over the course of her career, she earned two Gold-certified studio albums with total solo sales exceeding five million records worldwide.