Religion, roots, emotion, love and reality come together in the music made by soul diva Angie Stone, both on stage as on her two albums Black Diamond and Mahogany Soul. Together with her 'sista's' backing vocals she provides soul second to none: an unparalleled voice, unconcealed themes coming straight from the heart, good melodies and catchy refrains. To make you feel real, real hot. As a young girl South Carolina-born Angela Brown Stone listened to soul music of Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Donna Hathaway, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin and The Temptations. Her father, himself a member of a gospel choir, takes her to performances by famous gospel choirs that Stone thoroughly enjoys. In those same gospel choirs she later develops her sense of rhythm, timing and swing, which helps her in her later self-teaching of piano and saxophone lessons. When she reaches the age of fourteen she is part of rap crew The Sequence, and with them she records a few albums in the eighties. A leading lady of formation Vertical Hold, at the beginning of the nineties, she has a modest hit with R&B-song Seems Your Much Too Busy. During these years she meets the younger and then still unknown vocalist D'Angelo, and with whom she has her second child. She is of great influence on his remarkable debut Brown Sugar, in the meantime coaches the voice of Mary J. Blige and sings and plays the saxophone with Lenny Kravitz. His cousin, Gerry DeVaux, a well-known producer, later makes out a case for Angie's solo-career. The kind of music made by Angie Stone and sister vocalists like Jill Scott, Macy Gray and India Arie are known as New Classic Soul, a.k.a. Nu-Soul. Old soul with new elements added (like Hip Hop and Spoken Word), in the footsteps of the greatest soul-legends.
