Angie Stone, Grammy-nominated R&B singer, dies in vehicle collision

Angie Stone, a Grammy-nominated R&B singer and songwriter who found success as part of the 1990s neo-soul movement after nearly two decades in the music business, died early Saturday in a traffic accident in Alabama, according to the Associated Press. She was 63.

Her death was confirmed by the music producer Walter Millsap III, who told the AP that Stone had been traveling in a van to Atlanta after a concert when the van “flipped over and was subsequently hit by a big rig.” Millsap said the other passengers in the van survived the crash.

As a teenager growing up in Columbia, S.C., Stone formed the early hip-hop trio the Sequence, which landed a recording contract with Sugar Hill Records; she later sang in a group called Vertical Hold and wrote songs for and performed with the likes of D’Angelo, Lenny Kravitz and Mary J. Blige. Yet Stone didn’t break out widely until 1999 with the release of her debut solo album, “Black Diamond,” which earned rave reviews on its way to being certified gold and spun off the hit single “No More Rain (In This Cloud),” which topped Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart for 10 weeks. In 2002 she scored another big hit with “Wish I Didn’t Miss You,” which has more than 136 million streams on Spotify.

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Both songs embodied the earthy ideals and throwback spirit — “Wish I Didn’t Miss You” prominently sampled the O’Jays’ early-’70s “Back Stabbers” — that made stars of fellow neo-soul artists such as Erykah Badu, Maxwell and D’Angelo after years in which R&B had moved steadily closer to the flash and attitude of hip-hop.

In a 2000 interview with The Times, Stone said Lauryn Hill “broke the mold” with her Grammy-winning 1998 LP, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” “Our society is so image-conscious, and she said that it’s OK to be natural and beautiful and sing about something with substance,” Stone said.

Angela Laverne Brown was born in Columbia in 1961 and started singing in church; her father, an attorney’s assistant, performed on the side in a gospel quartet. Under the name Angie B, she formed the Sequence with Gwendolyn Chisholm and Cheryl Cook and moved to the Bronx, N.Y. The trio, one of rap’s first female groups, had a hit with 1979’s “Funk You Up,” which Dr. Dre later sampled for his “Keep Their Heads Ringin’.”

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After the Sequence broke up in 1985, Stone worked with Mantronix and toured as Kravitz’s sax player before joining Vertical Hold, which released two LPs on A&M Records in the mid-’90s. She met D’Angelo around that time and the two became creative and romantic partners; she contributed to his 1995 debut, “Brown Sugar,” and the two later had a son in 1998.

Stone’s song “Everyday,” which she wrote with D’Angelo, was featured on the soundtrack of the 1997 movie “Money Talks,” which led to a deal with Clive Davis’ Arista Records for “Black Diamond.” Stone continued to release albums throughout the 2000s, including “The Art of Love & War,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart in 2007.

In addition to music, Stone worked frequently as an actor, appearing in films such as “The Fighting Temptations” and “Ride Along” and on Broadway in the musical “Chicago.” Her survivors include her son, Michael, and a daughter, Diamond, from her marriage to the rapper Rodney Cee of the Funky 4 + 1.