However the voice was nurtured many years before. Angie was born in South Carolina, the only child to a musician father and nurse mother. She started singing gospel music at a young age in her father’s local Baptist Church, where she soon joined him as a member of the main choir. He also took his only child to see performances by artists such as The Gospel Keynotes.
There was an early hint at the fame to come, when a fourteen year old Angie received a standing ovation at a local talent contest, after dazzling the crowd with a selection of songs and dance routines. She was given the runner up prize but they have now named November 12th as Angie Stone day in her home state.
During her youth, Angie wrote poetry, took up the saxophone, played sports and was offered a college basketball scholarship. Angie also performed solitary "mirror concerts" in her bedroom to recordings of her heroes Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. Indeed Angie has repaid the musical debt by covering Marvin Gaye’s haunting title song from the movie Trouble Man on her new album Black Diamond.
While taking dead-end jobs, Angie began saving money to record her own demos at a local studio called PAW. She joined a rap trio The Sequence who recorded hits for the legendary Sugarhill Records including I Don't Need Your Love (Part One) in 1982. As the label’s first ever female rapper Angie set the benchmark and came to the attention of Prince protege Jill Jones and Malcolm McLaren.
Soon after, Angie was working with Mantronix and Lenny Kravitz (who appears on Black Diamond). She was then offered a publishing deal and became a much sought after songwriter. Angie went on to form the neo-soul trio Vertical Hold who released the singles Summertime, Seems You're Much Too Busy, ASAP and Love Today.
Going solo, her debut album Black Diamond was issued in 1999 in America and within three months had garnered Billboard magazine critics’ album of the year award and sold more than 700,000 copies. It has an "old school" feel exemplified by her ballad No More Rain (In This Cloud) which has samples from Gladys Knight & The Pips' Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye).The title was taken from a rebuffing phrase that her father would use when Stone would sometimes ask him for money: 'There's no more rain in this cloud'.
Angie says she "set out to make a funk album that had elements of blues and soul. Funk seems to have disappeared from the pop industry. Everyone is doing hip hop these days. I grew up on Parliament, Funkadelic, the Ohio Players and the Bar-Kays. That was the sound I was after."
Angie Stone has written songs for and collaborated with Mary J. Blige, Diana Ross, Al Green, Erykah Badu, former Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Mohammed and ex-boyfriend D’Angelo who guests on the track Everyday.
D’Angelo wrote the song Brown Sugar about Angie and it became one of the biggest R’n’B hits of the 'nineties. In return Angie helped put together his last two albums and the sound of his live shows.
It was during one of these live appearances in the U.K. that Angie was spotted and signed up as a solo artist. Luckily she had been storing up songs originally intended for others. "Writing songs is my special gift. I’m truly blessed in that department. I could write a great song every day" Angie told Fergus Greer in The Times Metro Magazine recently.
