Angie Stone, the Grammy-nominated US hip hop pioneer whose group The Sequence was one of the first all-female groups to record a rap song, has died in a car crash.
Stone, 63, known for the 2001 hit Wish I Didn’t Miss You, died in a car accident in Montgomery, Alabama, early on Saturday, following a performance, her representative Deborah R Champagne said.
Guy Todd Williams, better known as Rahiem from the Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, the first rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, said nine other passengers were in a van with Stone during the accident but she was the only fatality.
Image: Angie Stone singing at the Blue Balls Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland in 2004. File pic: AP
Music producer Walter Millsap III told The Associated Press in an email: “Unfortunately, at around 4am while heading back to Atlanta from Alabama, the Sprinter flipped over and was subsequently hit by a big rig. Thankfully, all survived except for Angie.”
Stone, who was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including for best female R&B vocal performance in 2005, was also a songwriter and acted in movies and on Broadway.
Born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1961, Stone honed her singing talents in church.
She helped form female hip-hop trio The Sequence, whose most popular song, 1979’s Funk You Up, peaked at 15 on Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles.
The song has been sampled by numerous artists, including Dr Dre.
Image: Angie Stone performs with Dan Aykroyd, second left, and Jim Belushi as the Blues Brothers at a tribute to Aretha Franklin in 2008. File pic: AP
It was the first rap hit performed by women, according to Rolling Stone.
The group were signed to the now defunct Sugar Hill Records, which also represented Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, among other artists.
Williams said Stone “left her indelible mark on the music industry initially as a member of the legendary rap group Sequence”.
Her success in the UK was modest but her 1999 album Black Diamond and 2001 LP Mahogany Soul went Gold and spawned several chart hits.
She also had a number of successful collaborations with artists such as Guru, Omar, Macy Gray, Moby, Prince and Blue including on the 2003 top 11 chart hit Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours.
She created hits such as No More Rain (In This Cloud) which reached number one for 10 weeks on Billboard’s Adult R&B airplay chart, Baby with soul singer Betty Wright, another number one hit, as well as Wish I Didn’t Miss You and Brotha.
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Mahogany Soul also reached number 22 on the Billboard 200, while 2007’s The Art Of Love & War peaked at number 11.
She tried her hand at acting, appearing in The Hot Chick starring Rob Schneider, The Fighting Temptations which starred Cuba Gooding Jr and Beyonce, and Ride Along featuring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart.
Stone also trod the boards on Broadway as Big Mama Morton in the musical Chicago, and appeared in the reality TV shows Celebrity Fit Club and R&B Divas: Atlanta.
