AUSTELL, Ga. (AP) — Musical artists and family members on Friday mourned Grammy-nominated R&B singer Angie Stone, who was killed in a automotive crash earlier this month.
Mourners filed into the huge Phrase of Religion Cathedral west of Atlanta, taking their seats round a silver and gold casket surrounded by a sea of crimson roses.
“In her song No More Rain (In This Cloud),’” she says my sunshine is coming, and I’m all cried out,” filmmaker and leisure govt Tyler Perry stated at Friday’s service.
“There’s no more rain in this cloud,” he said. “The beauty of what she was talking about is when a cloud has no more tears, it dissipates, it’s gone.”
The tune, like so a lot of Stone’s hits, discovered nice success. It reached No. 1 for 10 weeks on Billboard’s Grownup R&B airplay chart.
The cargo van she was driving in flipped over and was then hit by a truck on March 1 close to Montgomery, Alabama, music producer and Stone’s longtime supervisor Walter Millsap III has stated. Everybody else within the van survived besides Stone, who was 63. On-line tributes from followers and fellow artists poured in after her dying.
“God is good even when life is not, and so we celebrate the life of our sister that has been well-lived,” stated Bishop Dale Bronner, the church’s senior pastor.
Many acclaimed musical artists carried out on the service, together with Keke Wyatt, Anthony Hamilton and Kirk Franklin.
Earlier than Wyatt sang Friday, she recalled how Stone would name her in the course of the evening to hope together with her or give her encouragement.
“She was so beautiful,” Wyatt stated. “Like seriously, I love her music and I love her voice and all that. But her as a person trumps all of that.”
The church-grown singer was born in Columbia, the place music was all the time in her life since she was a baby, Stone informed The Related Press in a 1999 interview. Her mom would sing round the home, and her father sang gospel and blues at institutions round Columbia.
One other service is deliberate on Saturday in Columbia, at First Nazareth Baptist Church.
Stone was a member of the all-female hip-hop trio The Sequence and identified for the hit tune “Wish I Didn’t Miss You.” She helped type The Sequence, the primary all-female group on the hip-hop trailblazing imprint Sugar Hill Information, turning into one of many first feminine teams to file a rap tune.
The group recorded “Funk You Up,” which has been sampled by quite a few artists, together with Dr. Dre.
After discovering success within the early Eighties, Stone later joined the trio Vertical Maintain earlier than launching her solo profession.
Stone created hits like “Baby” with legendary soul singer Betty Wright, one other No. 1 hit; and “Wish I Didn’t Miss You” and “Brotha.”
She discovered a candy spot within the early 2000s as neo-soul start to dominate the R&B panorama with the emergence of singers like Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Maxwell and D’Angelo.
Her 2001 album “Mahogany Soul” reached No. 22 on the Billboard 200, whereas 2007’s “The Art Of Love & War” peaked at No. 11.
A Soul Practice Woman of Soul winner, Stone went on to showcase her appearing chops with movie roles in “The Hot Chick” starring Rob Schneider, “The Fighting Temptations,” which starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé, and “Ride Along” led by Ice Dice and Kevin Hart.
She additionally hit the Broadway stage as Huge Mama Morton in “Chicago,” and she or he showcased her vulnerability on the fact TV exhibits “Celebrity Fit Club” and “R&B Divas: Atlanta.”
However her qualities as an individual and her lasting imprint on folks round her had been qualities that stored developing from speaker after speaker at Friday’s service.
“This woman sewed good things to people, she sewed kindness to people, she sewed joy to people, she sewed love and her voice to people,” Perry stated.
