Angie Stone’s children have released a statement, saying the singer-songwriter was “everything” to her family.
Stone, 63, was killed in a car accident on March 1, near Montgomery, Alabama, when her tour van collided with an 18-wheeler truck, the singer’s publicist Ra-Fael Blanco of 2R’s Entertainment & Media PR confirmed to Urban Hollywood 411.
Shortly after Stone’s death, her two children Diamond Stone and Michael Archer released a statement via the singer’s publicist.
“Never in a million years did we ever expect to get this horrible news. Our mom is and will always be our everything. We are still trying to process and are completely heartbroken,” Diamond and Michael said.
In addition to her children, Stone is survived by her grandchildren and extended family members.
Related: Angie Stone Homegoing to Include Tributes by Kirk Franklin, Anthony Hamilton, Keke Wyatt
Stone and her band were returning to Atlanta — after performing the night before in Mobile, Alabama — when the crash happened, according to the singer’s reps.
The group’s 2021 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van flipped over on Interstate 65 around 4:25 a.m. and was struck by a Freightliner Cascadia truck driven by a 33-year-old man, the Alabama Highway Patrol said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Stone was pronounced dead at the scene. Eight others in the van, including the driver and seven passengers, were taken to Baptist Medical Center for treatment. The extent of their injuries is not known.
The crash happened about 5 miles south of the Montgomery city limits. The cause is under investigation.
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Angie Stone was known as one of neo-soul’s leading ladies. She released a string of hits, including “No More Rain (In This Cloud),” “Brotha” and “Everyday” (one of several songs she wrote with her former partner D’Angelo).
She broke into the music business as a teenager in the 1970s when she formed hip-hop trio the Sequence with her high school friends Cheryl “The Pearl” Cook and Gwendolyn “Blondie” Chisolm. The group recorded under Joe and Sylvia Robinson’s Sugar Hill label, and scored a hit with their single “Funk You Up.”
In a 2023 interview with Shawn Prez for Vlad TV, Stone said the Sequence wrote hit songs like “Apache” for The Sugarhill Gang. She said the girl group paved the way for other women in rap, but never received the recognition they deserved.
“We have forgotten the one element that opened the doors for females everywhere — my group, the Sequence,” said Stone. “We were trailblazers. Back in ’79, when everybody was in the parks, we were on the road with The Gap Band, Con Funk Shun, Parliament-Funkadelic.”
She added that the Sequence’s single “Funk You Up” has been sampled by some of the biggest names in hip-hop and R&B.
“Dr. Dre did it with ‘Keep Their Heads Ringin,'” Erykah [Badu] did it with ‘Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop),’ Bruno Mars did it with ‘Uptown Funk.’ That is a derivative of the song we wrote — which is the first, original rap record by a female group and we were from the South… we laid the blueprint for hip-hop rapping and singing.”
Stone was a three-time Grammy nominee. She won two Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards. And in 2021, received the Soul Music Icon Award at the Black Music Honors.
The interview with Angie Stone about her legacy is below:
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