| Angie Stone For three decades, vocalist Angie Stone has been surprising audiences, critics, peers and the music industry itself. Born and raised in the Southern gospel tradition – while at the same time absorbing the gritty and impassioned anthems generated by soul icons of the 1960s – Stone has since mapped a life-long journey that encompasses rap, neo-soul, hip-hop, R&B, jazz and more. Along the way, attempts to pin her down according to this category or that movement have been challenging if not impossible. With each new recording, with each next step in her career, she has consistently hit the world with something it didn't see coming. Her new album's title, Unexpected, (her second for legendary soul music label Stax), a suggestion of surprises waiting within the album's twelve tracks, comes with a double meaning. Without question, it's a diverse mix of styles and colors, almost always upbeat and forward thinking. The unwavering sense of determination at its core, though, was actually forged by a heartbreaking turn of events. "I wanted this album to be something different," says Stone, whose 2007 Stax debut, The Art of Love & War, was her first album to top the Billboard R&B/hip-hop chart. Despite that prior success, she pressed forward in her ongoing search for new avenues to explore and new worlds to conquer. "I didn't want to make the kind of neo-soul record I had made in the past. That would have been repetitive."... [read more] |
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