Angie Stone

Stone has always struck me as a latter-day Gladys
Knight, a lady who sings like she knows her way around the church and the
high-rise and the rural South, who’s comfortable to a fault with conservative
soul trappings, not realizing that her best moments come when she steps beyond
the mix and indulges her supple voice and emotional credibility in seemingly
spontaneous testimony. Having endured enough of a career trough to suffer the
indignity of appearing on Celebrity Fit
Club a while back, Stone’s fourth and latest disc, The Art of Love & War on the
reconstituted Stax label, is not her best (I’d opt for Mahogany Soul), but of a self-assured
piece with her previous output. There are echoes of Stevie Wonder ("My People"),
her stint in the Soul II Soul spinoff Perfect World ("Go Back To Your Life"),
Philly soul ("Here We Go Again"), and slow jam romance ("Pop Pop"). Some of them are sure to be mixed in the
Stone favorites like Raphael Saadiq’s "Brotha" and the shimmering "No More Rain
(In This Cloud)" — which borrows a groove and sense of romantic-spiritual uplift
from Knight’s bag of tricks. It all adds up to R&B-pop with a dash of hip
hop that cuts a little deeper than neo-soul.