Mara Brock Akil Recalls Creating ‘Girlfriends’ Theme Song with Angie Stone (Exclusive)

Mara Brock Akil has only the fondest memories of working with Angie Stone.

The R&B singer, who tragically died following a car crash in March 2025, famously lent her silky vocals to the theme song of Akil’s hit show Girlfriends back in 2000.

And if the tune sounds ethereal, flowy and soothing, it’s because the making of it was just as seamless. While at the “Mara Brock Akil: Forever Our Girlfriend” event hosted by Hollywood Confidential on Oct. 1, Akil opened up about how the song came to be.

“I have a fun story about that,” she told PEOPLE exclusively. “My dear friend, KC Saney — you know, you call on your resources when you’re trying to do it big and the budget is tight — [I] called in a favor and was like, ‘KC, do you know anybody that could really give some special sauce to a theme song? I just need something. I need that call to arms, and everybody comes and shows up at the time.’ ”

“He was like, ‘Mara, you want me to call Angie?’ I was like, ‘Bruh. Yes! Call Angie.'” she continues. “And, literally, Angie Stone came and she did that song in about 15 to 20 minutes. Technically, she was in the building for about 30 minutes because she had to get to the airport.”

The studio session went swimmingly, Akil recalls, as Stone understood the tone of the show immediately.

“I gave a direction [and] a sense of the energy that I wanted to the producer, Camara Kambon, because I had already been in conversation with him,” she explains. “He then said a few words to Angie and to watch her — a professional — work [was amazing]. We were done in 15 minutes.”

Their adventures didn’t end there, though. Since Stone was on a tight schedule, she needed to catch a flight immediately after the session. The problem was, with technology still being in its infancy, the Forever creator and her husband, Salim Akil, had to lead her — police escort style — in the right direction.

“My husband, Salim, was with me at the time, and she’s like, ‘I don’t know which way to go to the airport,'” Brock recalls. “And, we led her to the freeway because there was no GPS [at the time].”

“I found out a couple of days later that she made the flight because there was also no texting.”

Girlfriends premiered on UPN — later The CW — on Sept. 11, 2000, and became an instant hit. Starring Tracee Ellis Ross, Golden Brooks, Persia White and Jill Marie Jones, the show followed four girlfriends in their 30s as they navigated their friendships, romantic relationships, careers and everything in between.

The show was equally lauded as it was criticized for its open discussion of Black women’s sexuality, an element Mara had deliberately crafted, believing it was all part of the story.

“Television was shifting [at the time]. I think Sex and the City really opened up the conversation about the complexity of women. And, their oversight of us as Black women, their intentional — it has to be intentional — exclusion, became my opportunity to paint in the void that they left,” she explains.

“Instead of getting mad and wasting my energy, I collected that energy and alchemized that dismissiveness of our humanity and redirected it to what I know to be true, and that is our humanity,” she continues. “And so, it created an opportunity for me to document what was on the minds, hearts and souls and lives of four Black women at the turn of the century.”

Twenty-five years later, the show remains a favorite among audiences, having been syndicated over the years and now available on Netflix. And while Mara never tires of receiving praise — Hollywood Confidential honored her with the Icon Award for her work — the best is always when she sees people make it their own.

“My favorite thing is that there’s not a day that I’m not asked for a Girlfriends reboot movie or something, and I always appreciate it. I take it all with complete gratitude, but the thing that really warms my heart is when people take time to do either reenactments of each character, and they each do a different fashion fit and do the Girlfriends [opening] thing. It’s a lot of content work,” she tells PEOPLE.

“Or, when they go on a trip with their girlfriends and they use the theme and they use the walk. And, it brings me the greatest joy and I’m seeing Black women all over the world doing this, not just locally or regionally or nationally,” she adds, “This is a global idea about the need for the chosen family and the sisterhood and Girlfriends is a part of everybody’s life that way is magical.”

Fans have long cried for a reboot, and while she and the cast have always been open to revisiting the story — especially because it was cancelled without a proper finale in the middle of season 8 — Mara has always said she’d be game, but the project would have to have the right funding.

“What I love is that we all are in agreement that we’ve got to be treated with the value that [the show] is. This show is serving four generations now across the world, and so it deserves its value. We don’t need to struggle through a celebration of a story, a film that could be done for Girlfriends,” she explains.

“I’m a believer … so if God wants us to do it, it will be done and it will be done in the right conditions and probably better than I’m even imagining because God always delivers better.”

Created by TV producer and author of Hollywood Confidential: 12 Secrets to Becoming the Star of Your Own Life, Steve Jones, the Hollywood Confidential event series features one-on-one conversations with the most powerful voices of color in entertainment in an effort to inspire and empower the next generation of actors, writers, producers and directors of color.

Before Mara, previous guests honored for their cultural impact included Lupita Nyong’o, Regina King, Angela Bassett, Tabitha Brown, Issa Rae and more.