“My sunshine has gone, and I’m all cried out, and there’s no more rain in this cloud” - Angie Stone
I’ve been to four funerals in my life, I’m pretty sure. Three of them came between the ages of 11 and 17, and I think I remember almost everything about them. The most recent was completely arranged by my uncle, the one who isn’t actually my uncle, for his mother. She lived next to my Nan for my entire life up until that point, in the little enclosure of houses I spent most of my summers in, and me, my brother, and any other grandchild within our gang would play football, using the gap in her fences as goal posts. She passed away in 2020, so the funeral was distanced, but I remember a certain aspect more than anything else, the final song, one that felt so incredibly personal, so close, it made up for the physical distance between us all. Give Me The Night by George Benson played as the funeral came to a close.
Hanif Abdurraqib’s “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” features one of my favourite essays of all time, a chapter named “In The Summer of 1997, Everyone Took To The Streets In Shiny Suits”. He talks about his mother’s passing, Biggie’s posthumous release of Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems, and eventually lands on his visit to New Orleans, in the recent aftermath of Katrina. After speaking about the music played, even in a place where there were no systems to play music other than with raw instruments, Abdurraqib signs the sentence off with “We make our own music to celebrate our dead where we must”, and that, to me, speaks to legacy. To me, that quote isn’t necessarily speaking to literal music we create, but the music that becomes synonymous with ones self, music that you may see in yourself, or music that other people may see in you. When one passes on, the celebration of life, formal or not, allows space to listen to the music we connect with as part of other people.
I got home from work a few nights ago to a text from my brother, a Spotify link to Ain’t It Fun by Paramore, which immediately spawned a long conversation on music, one that went on till 4am, one in which he sent me music he’d been working on, and debated who the greatest producer was (with his input, we decided on a toss-up between Jermaine Dupri & Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis). All of this to say, I have endlessly connected music to all the people I love in this life. I don’t think this, this idea that we connect music to the people we love, is something exclusive to after we have lost someone, however. I like to celebrate the music people give me whilst they are still here, so what I’m saying, friends, is that I will have a song for each of you, and I will celebrate you through the music you have given me, and whichever song I believe is yours and maybe you’ll disagree, but I think you’ll understand it, at the very least.
My brother probably has 200 songs, numerous of which are his own, or of USHER, of Skepta (Reflecting, I remember my brother playing it through the speakers at my old flat, and it was sunny outside, but I was hungover), or of Anthony Hamilton. And on his birthday, when we were seeing to a different celebration of life, when we sat in a pub in Peckham, when his girlfriend asked me what song we should ask the staff to play for him, I replied with the latter; Charlene by Anthony Hamilton. And I think I was right in my choice because everyone sang it when it came on.
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I have them for my best friends, for my past loves, and for everyone who fills the gaps in-between. Whether it’s You Know What by N.E.R.D, or Superman by Black Coffee, or the fucking Copacabana by Barry Manilow, they represent these people I love or loved in a medium I couldn’t possibly create myself. But what I will do instead is create the meaning that goes with them, and the memories they sit within.
I found out Angie Stone passed away whilst I was at work. I clocked out, and checked my phone as I went downstairs to grab my coat. My friend had tweeted “How drunk I’m finna get is for Angie Stone. RIP.”. And I remember shouting. What, exactly, I shouted I’m unsure of, nor am I sure of how loud it was, I just know I made a noise, came back upstairs and texted my mum. She replied later with a YouTube link to the I Wanna Thank Ya music video, by Stone and Snoop.
Then, at about 10pm, she texted again, in our trio-group chat (with me, my brother & my mum) with another link, a Spotify one this time, to No More Rain, with a message that read “Feel so sad, have so many memories w u guys where she’s been in the background”, and this, this sentiment, is what made me think of music connecting to memory, because all my memories of Angie Stone were connected to my mum. The times I heard Angie Stone, the first times I heard Angie Stone, were because of my mum. I remember my mum saying she heard my brother playing Wish I Didn’t Miss You on keyboard, and driving in the car when my mother would play that same song. Hearing I Wanna Thank Ya blasting through the speakers from my mums amp, and repeating that motion around my friend Seyi, when she let me play a song on the speakers at her work after it had closed.
So, Angie Stone will not only go down as a neo-soul and R&B icon, but as someone I will always remember for being deeply intrenched in my memories, and connected to the people I love. It is music that makes me feel close to people.
RIP Angie Stone.
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