Grammy-nominated soul singer dies in car crash at 63

Angie Stone, the R&B singer behind songs like the hit “Wish I Didn’t Miss You,” has died.

The musician was killed in a traffic accident in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday, the Associated Press reported. She was 63.

Stone was returning to Atlanta from Alabama when her van “flipped over and was subsequently hit by a big rig,” music producer Walter Millsap III told the AP. Everyone else in the vehicle survived, he said.

Born Angela Brown in Columbia, S.C., in 1961, Stone began her singing career with gospel performances at First Nazareth Baptist Church. 

At age 16, she joined forces with high school friends Cheryl “the Pearl” Cook and Gwendolyn “Blondie” Chisolm to form the hip-hop trio the Sequence. The group signed with Sugar Hill Records, releasing their hit single “Funk You Up” in 1979 (the song was later sampled on “Keep Their Heads Ringin'” by Dr. Dre) and three albums in the early 1980s.

Stone then joined another trio, Vertical Hold, releasing the albums A Matter of Time and Head First in the mid-1990s. She also recorded one album with the group Devox, and sang backing vocals on 5, the 1998 album from Lenny Kravitz, who was the cousin of Devox member Gerry DeVeaux. 

Stone released her debut solo album, Black Diamond, in 1999. The LP reached the Top 10 of Billboard‘s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and was certified gold. Its biggest single, “No More Rain (In This Cloud),” hit No. 1 on the Adult R&B Songs chart.

The singer also co-wrote the song “Jonz in My Bonz” with D’Angelo for his 1995 debut album, Brown Sugar, and later toured with him as a backing vocalist and co-wrote four songs for his seminal 2000 album, Voodoo.

Stone’s second solo album, Mahogany Soul, was released in 2001 and featured collaborations with Alicia Keys, Eve, Swizz Beatz, Carvin & Ivan, and Raphael Saadiq. It contained the hit single “Wish I Didn’t Miss You,” which would become her most famous song, and reached No. 4 on Billboard‘s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.

The singer’s third solo album, Stone Love, came out in 2005 and featured artists like Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, Anthony Hamilton, and more.