Grammy-nominated R&B singer Angie Stone, a member of the all-female hip-hop trio and known for her hit song “Wish I Mass You,” was killed early Saturday in a car accident. She was 63 years old.
Around 4am, the vehicle she was back from Alabama to Atlanta from the air “turned over and then hit by a big rig,” music producer Walter Millsap III told the Associated Press in an email.
Everyone else in the cargo van survived, except for the stone, he said. CBS News also confirmed the deaths of her spokespersons, Deborah R. Champagne and Stone.
Millsapp said he learned the news from Angie Stone’s daughter, Diamond, and longtime sequence member Blondy.
Derek White/Getty Images on TV
Stone was scheduled to perform at the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association’s men’s championship basketball game halftime show on Saturday. Rev. Ciaa Chaplain Jerome Barber sought a moment of silence in the game.
CIAA Commissioner Jacqie McWilliams-Parker said they were heartbroken by the loss. “She used her incredible talent, passion and presence to bring strength and hope to us, touch and touch us,” Parker said.
The singer-songwriter created hits like “No More Rain (This Cloud).” It reached number one in 10 weeks on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay Chart, “Baby.”
Stone found sweet spots with Neo Soul beginning to dominate the R&B landscape in the early 2000s, with singers like Erikabadu, Jill Scott, Maxwell and Dangelo.
Gregory Smith / AP
Her 2001 album, “Mahagony Soul,” reached number 22 on the Billboard 200, and 2007’s “The Art of Love & War” reached number 11.
The church-grown singer was born in Columbia, South Carolina. She helped shape the sequence, the first whole-women group on Hip Hop Trail Blazing’s Imprint Sugar Hill Records, becoming one of the first women’s groups to record a rap song.
After a successful career in the early 1980s, Stone later joined the trio vertical hold before beginning his solo career.
The winner of the female souls of Soul Train, Stone continued to show off her acting chops in “The Hot Hich,” starring “The Hot Chick,” starring “Ride and Ride,” led by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé, Ice Cube and Kevin Hart.
She also raided the Broadway stage as Big Mama Morton in “Chicago,” showing off her vulnerability on reality TV shows “Celebrity Fit Club” and “R&B Diva: Atlanta.”
