AUSTELL, Ga. (AP) — Musical artists and loved ones on Friday mourned Grammy-nominated R&B singer Angie Stone, who was killed in a car crash earlier this month.
Mourners filed into the massive Word of Faith Cathedral west of Atlanta, taking their seats around a silver and gold casket surrounded by a sea of red roses.
“In her song No More Rain (In This Cloud),'” she says my sunshine is coming, and I’m all cried out,” filmmaker and entertainment executive Tyler Perry said 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 song, like so many of Stone's hits, found great success. It reached No. 1 for 10 weeks on Billboard’s Adult R&B airplay chart.
The cargo van she was riding in flipped over and was then hit by a truck on March 1 near Montgomery, Alabama, music producer and Stone’s longtime manager Walter Millsap III has said. Everyone else in the van survived except Stone, who was 63. Online tributes from fans and fellow artists poured in after her death.
“God is good even when life is not, and so we celebrate the life of our sister that has been well-lived,” said Bishop Dale Bronner, the church’s senior pastor.
Many acclaimed musical artists performed at the service, including Keke Wyatt, Anthony Hamilton and Kirk Franklin.
Before Wyatt sang Friday, she recalled how Stone would call her in the middle of the night to pray with her or give her encouragement.
“She was so beautiful,” Wyatt said. “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, where music was always in her life since she was a child, Stone told The Associated Press in a 1999 interview. Her mother would sing around the house, and her father sang gospel and blues at establishments around Columbia.
Another service is planned on Saturday in Columbia, at First Nazareth Baptist Church.
Stone was a member of the all-female hip-hop trio The Sequence and known for the hit song “Wish I Didn’t Miss You.” She helped form The Sequence, the first all-female group on the hip-hop trailblazing imprint Sugar Hill Records, becoming one of the first female groups to record a rap song.
The group recorded “Funk You Up,” which has been sampled by numerous artists, including Dr. Dre.
After finding success in the early 1980s, Stone later joined the trio Vertical Hold before launching her solo career.
Stone created hits like “Baby” with legendary soul singer Betty Wright, another No. 1 hit; and “Wish I Didn’t Miss You” and “Brotha.”
She found a sweet spot in the early 2000s as neo-soul begin to dominate the R&B landscape 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, while 2007’s “The Art Of Love & War” peaked at No. 11.
A Soul Train Lady of Soul winner, Stone went on to showcase her acting chops with film roles in “The Hot Chick” starring Rob Schneider, “The Fighting Temptations,” which starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé, and “Ride Along” led by Ice Cube and Kevin Hart.
She also hit the Broadway stage as Big Mama Morton in “Chicago,” and she showcased her vulnerability on the reality TV shows “Celebrity Fit Club” and “R&B Divas: Atlanta.”
But her qualities as a person and her lasting imprint on people around her were qualities that kept coming up 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 said.
Jeff Martin, The Associated Press
