Angie Stone: Grammy-nominated US rap pioneer dies in car accident in Alabama while nine other passengers survive
Angie Stone, the Grammy-nominated US hip hop pioneer whose group The Sequence was one of the first all-female groups to record a rap song, has died in a car crash.
Stone, 63, known for the 2001 hit Wish I Didn’t Miss You, died in a car accident in Montgomery, Alabama, early on Saturday, following a performance, her representative Deborah R Champagne said.
Guy Todd Williams, better known as Rahiem from the Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, the first rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, said nine other passengers were in a van with Stone during the accident but she was the only fatality.
Angie Stone singing at the Blue Balls Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland in 2004. File pic: AP
Music producer Walter Millsap III told The Associated Press in an email: “Unfortunately, at around 4am while heading back to Atlanta from Alabama, the Sprinter flipped over and was subsequently hit by a big rig. Thankfully, all survived except for Angie.”
Stone, who was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including for best female R&B vocal performance in 2005, was also a songwriter and acted in movies and on Broadway.
Born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1961, Stone honed her singing talents in church.
She helped form female hip-hop trio The Sequence, whose most popular song, 1979’s Funk You Up, peaked at 15 on Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles.
The song has been sampled by numerous artists, including Dr Dre.
Angie Stone performs with Dan Aykroyd, second left, and Jim Belushi as the Blues Brothers at a tribute to Aretha Franklin in 2008. File pic: AP
It was the first rap hit performed by women, according to Rolling Stone.
The group were signed to the now defunct Sugar Hill Records, which also represented Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, among other artists.
Williams said Stone “left her indelible mark on the music industry initially as a member of the legendary rap group Sequence”.
Her success in the UK was modest but her 1999 album Black Diamond and 2001 LP Mahogany Soul went Gold and spawned several chart hits.
She also had a number of successful collaborations with artists such as Guru, Omar, Macy Gray, Moby, Prince and Blue including on the 2003 top 11 chart hit Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours.
She created hits such as No More Rain (In This Cloud) which reached number one for 10 weeks on Billboard’s Adult R&B airplay chart, Baby with soul singer Betty Wright, another number one hit, as well as Wish I Didn’t Miss You and Brotha.
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Mahogany Soul also reached number 22 on the Billboard 200, while 2007’s The Art Of Love & War peaked at number 11.
She tried her hand at acting, appearing in The Hot Chick starring Rob Schneider, The Fighting Temptations which starred Cuba Gooding Jr and Beyonce, and Ride Along featuring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart.
Stone also trod the boards on Broadway as Big Mama Morton in the musical Chicago, and appeared in the reality TV shows Celebrity Fit Club and R&B Divas: Atlanta.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
A farmer who fell from a greenhouse roof during an anti-immigrant raid at a licensed cannabis facility in California this week has died of his injuries.
Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die as a result of Donald Trump’s Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) raids.
His niece, Yesenia Duran, posted on the fundraising site GoFundMe to say her uncle was his family’s only provider and he had been sending his earnings back to his wife and daughter in Mexico.
The United Food Workers said Mr Alanis had worked on the farm for 10 years.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorise American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” the union said in a recent statement on X.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it executed criminal search warrants at Glass House Farms facilities on Thursday.
Mr Alanis called family to say he was hiding and possibly fleeing agents before he fell around 30ft (9m) from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources.
Agents arrested 200 people suspected of being in the country illegally and identified at least 10 immigrant children on the sites, the DHS said in a statement.
Mr Alanis was not among them, the agency said.
“This man was not in and has not been in CBP (Customs and Border Protection) or ICE custody,” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30ft. CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.”
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Four US citizens were arrested during the incident for allegedly “assaulting or resisting officers”, the DHS said, and authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents.
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In a statement, Glass House, a licensed Cannabis grower, said immigration agents had valid warrants. It said workers were detained and it is helping provide them with legal representation.
“Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,” it added.
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