R&B superstar Angie Stone can sing, write her own songs and the young musician taught herself how to play the keyboard. Just what can't the lovely lady do? Working her way up from her start singing lead vocals on Vertical Hold's hit song "Seems You're Much Too Busy," Stone has migrated into the high-profile contemporary urban/R&B universe. In the short 15 years since arriving on stage, she has performed songs with a wide range of musicians, from Lenny Kravitz to Mantronix, and several of her albums and songs have fared well on the Billboard charts.Stone got her musical start in Columbia, South Carolina, where she grew up singing gospel music at First Nazareth Baptist Church. Gospel music has been a drawing influence on the artist from the beginning, and she continued to pursue a career in music after graduating from high school. Eventually, Stone teamed up with Gwendolyn Chisolm and Cheryl Cook to form the group Sequence. The trio recorded songs for Sugarhill's label, and soon thereafter Stone started working with rapper Mantronix and rock artist Lenny Kravitz, forming the group Vertical Hold. Vertical Hold held great presence in early 1990s, and two of the group's albums made the Billboard charts before the band eventually split ways.Finally pursuing a solo career, Stone signed with record label Arista and released her debut album Black Diamond in 1999. The album proved to be a mixture of the different kinds of musical background the singer had acquired by then- a combination of funk, hip-hop, R&B and traditional soul music. Black Diamond made it to number nine on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, but Stone's sophomore album Mahogany Soul and third release Stone Love had even more success. Stone's fourth and most recent release The Art of Love & War is by far her most popular, landing at number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart in 2007.
