 Angie Stone is the kind of artist for whom classification always does a disservice. She possesses a voice of uncommon versatility, sounding equally at home alongside the hottest emcee or fronting a choir. But she doesn’t defy classification, not in the way say a Meshell Ndegeocello or a Joi Gilliam does. Rather, she sort of obliterates the artificial lines between genres, making you realize as you listen to her music that there is really little difference between “neo-soul” and “R&B” and “hip-hop/soul”.
But you can’t really sell that. How could you? Well, if you’re Stax and Stone, you call the album Unexpected and try to tell everyone that it will upend their expectations of who Stone is, that Stone is doing something she’s never done before.
Except, if you are an Angie Stone fan, you know that in her nearly 30 years in the industry she’s done just about everything there is to do, from helping to shape hip hop with Sequence to helping shape D’Angelo to helping shape contemporary soul and giving us perhaps the greatest contemporary soul single of the decade, “Wish I Didn’t Miss You”....full text |
| On her second album for Concord’s Stax imprint (and fourth overall), Angie Stone delves deeper into funk and hip-hop than on her previous outings. Her last offering, The Art of Love & War, was a critical and commercial triumph for the vastly underrated vocalist, and topped the Billboard chart. With a slew of producers including Sly Williams, Willie “Chuck” Shivers, Karrim King and Fitzroy Reid, Steven “Supe” White, Jonathan Richmond, Jazze Pha, and Stone herself, these dozen tracks continue to reveal her versatility as a vocalist and recording artist; she can sing whatever it is she wants to with equal verve, authenticity, and flair. Despite the slicker and more diverse sounds on Unexpected, the soul quotient is high, even if this isn’t strictly a neo-soul album. The new beat consciousness reveals itself most on the title track, which is hard funk at its 2009 best. Cuts such as “Free” might have come right out of the 1990s with their use of careening synths, shimmering hip-hop beats, and colliding loops. But the melody is solid, its chorus and refrain catchy. “I Found a Keeper” is another; its production, arrangement, and structure actually feel like it was recorded in the 1990s -- and is at least reminiscent in spirit to material by the trio MoKenStef. But these are not complaints. Stone’s voice is so strident and drenched in soul that even the harpsichord sound on the latter track can’t overpower it. The one complaint is the utterly unnecessary use of Auto-Tune on a beautiful song like “Tell Me” -- the synths and dancefloor beats are one thing, but the inclusion of this device just feels plain alien on this track. For fans worried that Stone abandoned her old-school sound completely, they needn’t worry. The first single, “I Ain’t Hearin’ You,” is drenched in neo-soul grooves, as are “Think Sometimes,” “I Don’t Care,” and the gorgeous ballads “All Over Your Body” and “Why Is It.” If one goes back to Angie Stone’s debut album, Black Diamond, and follows the progression of her sound, it will be obvious that there has been a continued and restless path of growth and experimentation. Unexpected simply feels like a leap more than a step....full text |
| Honored themes of grown-up R&B pervade the songs of Angie Stone: love lost and found, persistence in the face of tribulation, touches of defiance and statements of self-worth, and, ultimately, expressions of faith. It’s a classic storyboard and it has never steered wrong this powerhouse Atlanta singer, from her time with the underappreciated early-’90s group Vertical Hold (a precursor to the neo-soul wave) through this, her sixth solo album. “Unexpected’’ offers more musical variety than previous discs, from the lively and fun “I Ain’t Hearing You’’ - about a man who can’t possibly be cheating - to the more formulaic “Tell Me,’’ where synthetic beats and the dreaded Auto-Tune take away from the warmth of Stone’s spirit and voice. This may be a bid to reach a younger audience, but Stone needn’t fret about keeping up with the Beyoncés; her church-infused, middle-class songs carry a proud legacy, and when she decries her “haters,’’ it rings false. Where she shines is on the ballads: “Maybe’’ and “Why Is It’’ are classic slow jams of the old school, a sadly fading form of which Stone is one of the great current purveyors. (Out now) SIDDHARTHA MITTER...full text |
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