Faith Evans

Faith Renée Evans (born June 10, 1973) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Born in Lakeland, Florida, and raised in New Jersey, she relocated to Los Angeles in 1991 in pursuit of a recording career. Evans initially performed as a backing vocalist for R&B singers Al B. Sure! and Christopher Williams, and by the age of 20, signed with Sean Combs' Bad Boy Records as the label's first female artist in 1994. Following her uncredited appearance on labelmate the Notorious B.I.G.'s single "One More Chance", she released her debut studio album, Faith (1995), to critical acclaim and moderate commercial reception. Evans then guest performed alongside 112 on Combs' 1997 single "I'll Be Missing You," which won Best Rap Performance at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards and became the first hip hop song to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100. Her second and third albums, Keep the Faith (1998) and Faithfully (2001), peaked at numbers six and 14 on the Billboard 200, respectively, and saw further critical praise.

Evans parted ways with Bad Boy in favor of Capitol Records in 2003. Her fourth album, The First Lady (2005) peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 and topped the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, while her fifth album, A Faithful Christmas (2005)—a holiday album—failed to chart and served as her final release on a major label. After a hiatus, she released her sixth album, Something About Faith (2010) independently, followed by her seventh album, Incomparable (2014). With a career spanning three decades, Evans has sold over 20 million records worldwide.

Outside of recording, Evans is known as the widow of rapper Christopher "the Notorious B.I.G." Wallace, whom she married on August 4, 1994, after meeting the rapper at a Bad Boy photoshoot. The turbulent marriage resulted in Evans's involvement in the East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry—which dominated much of hip hop music's mainstream coverage at the time—and concluded with Wallace's unsolved drive-by murder on March 9, 1997. Also an actress and author, Evans made her screen debut on the 2000 musical drama Turn It Up by Robert Adetuyi. Her 2008 autobiography, Keep the Faith: A Memoir, was released by Grand Central Publishing and won a 2009 African American Literary Award for the Best Biography/Memoir category.