Angie Stone: For the Grown & Sexy

Angie Stone is proud to be one of the few artists keeping genuine R & B alive. “The record business is currently in a desire strait. Great music is being replaced by fly-by-night hits,” Stone said to writer Marcie Hill. “Great music is being washed to the side by fads and it’s hurting the music industry.”

Angie Stone makes grown folks music, plain and simple. She isn’t looking for a quick hit or to start a trend, she just wants to make music, something that seems to be lacking in younger artists. “We work hard all our lives to create great music,” continued Stone. “You have a lot of program directors that are in their 20s, and they cater to that age group.”

Her newest project is definitely not for the Justin Bieber and Rihanna crowd. Stone recently released her newest single, Do What You Gotta Do, from her latest album Rich Girl. The song, written by Sunday Best winner Y’anna Crawley, is soulful and upbeat. The baseline is funky and Stone’s distinctive voice is light as she croons over the beat. She knew she had to have the song as soon as she heard it. “It was speaking to my spirit, it resolved some situations about music I had in my mind,” she was quoted saying on her website. It was telling me to keep my head up, saying ‘you can make it and do what you gotta do,’ giving me the beginning of the new album and the resolve to make it into something beyond anything I had ever done before.”

She feels like this album is taking her back to the Angie Stone we knew back in the day. “I spent a lot of time over the past few years working with other people, writing with them, working with producers.  And then one day I realized that while I was doing everything I could to help them succeed and watching them grow, I was losing pieces of myself in the process,” she said.  “I shaved a lot of my originality off when merging with so many other people. Fans weren’t getting Angie Stone.”

Although she is best known as a singer, Stone is also an accomplished actress. She has been landing acting roles since 2000 and has been seen on TV in Girlfriends, in movies like Fighting Temptations and an off-Broadway in Chicago as Mama Morton.  According to Stone, acting is her passion. “Right now, I am most proud of my acting ability, since before I wanted to sing, I wanted to act, and it’s another part of me,” she said to Suite 101.

Stone is a long cry from the teen cheerleader she describes during the early years of hip-hop. Like many young singers, Stone started out just singing with her girlfriends. She was even know to spit a lyric or two. “I formed that group, when I was in high school. Me and a couple of high school friends got together and started doing songs. We were cheerleaders. So it was easy to write and create stuff,” she said of her early days. “Singing was more important to me than rapping at the time. Actually when we got discovered, we got discovered singing and rap was added to our song. That’s how we became rappers. We didn’t start out being rappers. We started out being singers.”

She had been in a couple of singing groups since 1979 and did not go solo until 20 years later. For Stone, being able to survive so many years in the music business is the biggest marker of success. “The word ‘success’ to me means longevity,” she said. “I have been successful since I have been doing this for a long time, so I know all the pitfalls to look out for.”

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–Ashleigh Atwell