The 411 Magazine issue 3 | Page 21

FEATURE
Despite the fact that Faith Evans carved out a lengthy
recording career in her own right, her name will forever
remain linked, in the minds of many, to her late husband,
the Notorious B.I.G. Evans was an active session singer and
songwriter before signing her own solo deal and marrying
Biggie. While she never matched the level of his stardom, she
continued to come into her own as a vocalist in the years after
his untimely death. Each one of her fi rst four studio albums
reached the top fi ve of Billboard's R&B albums chart, and she
attained twice as many top ten R&B s ingles.
Evans was born on June 10, 1973, and grew up in Newark,
New Jersey, where she began singing in church at the mere
age of two. A high school honour student, she sang in her
school's musical productions before winning a full scholarship
to Fordham University. After just one year though, she left
college to put her jazz and classical training to use in the fi eld
of contemporary R&B. It didn't take her long to fi nd work, and
over the next few years she sang backup and wrote songs for
artists like Hi-Five, Mary J. Blige, Pebbles, Al B. Sure!, Usher,
Tony Thompson and Christopher Williams. Thanks to her
work on Blige's 1994 sophomore effort, 'My Life', Evans met
producer and impresario Sean "Puffy" Combs, who signed
her to his Bad Boy label. In 1995, Evans released her debut
album, 'Faith', which went platinum on the strength of the hit
R&B singles 'You Used to Love Me' and 'Soon As I Get Home'.
The same year, she met fellow Bad Boy artist the Notorious
B.I.G. (some accounts say at a photo shoot, others a phone
conversation) and married him after a courtship of just nine
days. Shortly thereafter, she guested on a remix of his smash
single 'One More Chance'. Over the next couple of years,
Evans continued her behind-the-scenes work, performing and
writing for records by the likes of Color Me Badd and LSG.
She and Biggie also had a son, Christopher Wallace, Jr., in
late 1996. However, by that point, their marriage had already
become strained. Biggie had publicly taken up with rapper Lil'
Kim and rumours had been spreading about an Evans liaison
with Biggie's rival 2Pac (alluded to on 2Pac's venomous 'Hit
Me Off'). The couple had unoffi cially separated when Biggie
was shot and killed in March 1997. A grief-stricken Evans was
prominently featured on the Puff Daddy tribute single 'I'll Be
Missing You', which, with its cribbed Police hook, zoomed to
the top of the charts and became one of the year's biggest
hits.
Evans' second album, 'Keep the Faith', followed in 1998
and spun off several R&B hits over the next year, including
'Love Like This', 'All Night Long', and the Babyface-
produced R&B number one 'Never Gonna Let You Go'. In
the meantime, she worked with Aaron Hall, Tevin Campbell
and DMX, among others and also made high-profi le
guest appearances on two 1999 hits, Whitney Houston's
'Heartbreak Hotel' and Eric Benét's cover of Toto and
Cheryl Lynn's 'Georgy Porgy'. She eventually married record
executive Todd Russaw, who took an active role in helping
manage her career.
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