Angie Stone, hip-hop pioneer-turned-neo-soul singer, dies at 63

A prolific songwriter with a sultry alto voice, Ms. Stone specialized in songs that combined laid-back tempos with layered instrumentation and vocals.
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"Angie Stone will stand proud alongside Lauryn Hill as a songwriter, producer and singer with all the props in place to become a grande dame of the R&B world in the next decade," Billboard magazine wrote in 1999.
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Ms. Stone (left), performing "America the Beautiful" with Alicia Keys during the NBA All-Star game in Philadelphia in 2002.
DAN LOH/Associated Press
By then, Ms. Stone was an industry veteran — not only as a singer, but as a songwriter for, and collaborator with, some of her era's biggest acts.
She first emerged as a member of the Sequence, which she formed in 1978 with Cheryl Cook and Gwendolyn Chisolm. It was the first female group signed to Sugar Hill Records, the label that put rap on the map with the single "Rapper's Delight" (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang.
The trio lasted only a few years, but in that time, it released several seminal rap singles, including 'Funk You Up' (1979) and 1981′s 'Funky Sound (Tear the Roof Off),' which have been sampled by Ice Cube, En Vogue, Dr. Dre, and other artists.
Ms. Stone then spent more than a decade as a songwriter, backup singer, and band member for prominent acts such as Mary J. Blige, Lenny Kravitz, and D'Angelo. She was busy, and successful, but she found the anonymity of working behind the scenes frustrating.
"I knew it wasn't my talent, because everybody wanted a piece of me for something," she told the Los Angeles Times in 2000. "After a while, I started to feel used. I thought, 'If I'm good enough to help Mary, and to do this and that, what is the problem?'"
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Part of the issue was timing. Ms. Stone had been a member of two R&B acts — Vertical Hold and Devox — in the early 1990s, but their sound was considered out of sync with the mainstream. It was only after breakout hits by the likes of Hill and Badu later in the decade that Ms. Stone received the attention she thought she deserved.
'I really think that I was ahead of my time,' she told the Associated Press in 1999. 'My music caught up to time, or time caught up to my music.'
Angela Laverne Brown was born Dec. 18, 1961, in Columbia, S.C. She started singing at an early age at her church, where her father, Bobby Williams, a lawyer's assistant, was part of a gospel quartet. Her mother, Iona (Brown) Williams, was a hospital technician.
In 1979, Ms. Stone, Cook, and Chisolm sneaked backstage at a concert in Columbia where Sylvia Robinson, a founder of Sugar Hill Records, was seated.
They auditioned then and there, and Robinson, impressed, said she would sign them to her label. They moved to New York and began recording.
Ms. Stone's marriage to Rodney Stone, who performed under the stage name Lil' Rodney C with the rap group Funky Four Plus One, ended in divorce.
She leaves her daughter from that marriage, Diamond Stone; a son from her relationship with D'Angelo, Michael D'Angelo Archer II; and two grandchildren.
Ms. Stone had Type 2 diabetes, and she spoke openly about her efforts to lose weight. In 2006, she appeared on the television show 'Celebrity Fit Club,' losing 18 pounds over the course of the season.
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She branched out into acting in the 2000s, with roles in "The Hot Chick" (2002), with Rob Schneider; "The Fighting Temptations" (2003), with Cuba Gooding Jr.; and "Ride Along" (2014), with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube. Onstage, she appeared as the prison matron Mama Morton in the Broadway production of "Chicago" in 2003.
She also had small roles in several TV series, including "Girlfriends," starring Tracee Ellis Ross, for which she sang the opening theme.
Ms. Stone recorded 10 studio albums, most recently 'Love Language' (2023). Among the 11 tracks is 'Old Thang Back,' which features her son, who performs under the name Swayvo Twain.
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