AFTER BIGGIE: FAITH EVANS HAS A NEW Love, A NEW Baby, A New Career - singer

Ebony, April, 1999 by Kevin Chappell

Being business-minded is a good attribute when dealing with Bad Boy, and its high-flying CEO, Scan (Puffy) Combs. "We have more of an understanding of each other now and more respect for each other," she says of Puff Daddy, who signed her to Bad Boy after she sang for him in a studio one night. "It's definitely more of a business relationship than a personal one."

Evans says that, contrary to rumors, she gets along fine with Puffy. "I'm just into my own thing; not that I oppose anybody else's thing, but I don't have time to hang out, whether it's with him or anybody else," she says. "It's not like we dislike each other. People don't see me with him in pictures a lot or at shows, or whatever, so they kind of assume that we don't like each other.

"My business issues are just that--business--and I deal with them like they are business," she continues. "I don't really have any personal issues with him. He just happens to be the head of my record company. I think because he is an artist, people make more of it than what it really is. Puffy's cool. I respect him totally. He does what he does well, and we make hit records, and that's the most important part of it all."

Faith has come a long way since her humble beginnings in Newark, N.J. Growing up, she lived with her grandmother most of the time, spending many weekends with her mother, who was constantly on the road, singing backup for a rock band. She knows little about her father, other than he was a member of that band, that he's White and that she's never met him. But she has no ill-feelings toward him, and she doesn't rule out the possibility of meeting him one day. "I would be interested, but I'm not going to go on a search or have somebody go find him. He would have shown himself by now if he was interested. Either way, I'm fine."

A student of jazz and classical music, Evans was a high school honor student and all-round good kid. She starred in school musicals, and was even crowned Miss New Jersey Fashion Teen. She later attended Fordham University in New York City on an academic scholarship, dropping out after a year to pursue her singing career.

Faith has been surrounded by music all of her life. When she was only 4, she made grown folks cry on Sundays at Emmanuel Baptist Church with her stirring rendition of "Let the Sunshine In."

Since then, she's wanted to be a singer, even proclaiming in her University High School yearbook: "Look for me at the Grammys."

She made good on that promise last year when she won the Best Rap Performance music award for "I'll Be Missing You," a song she co-wrote with Puffy. The success of that multiplatinum song helped re-establish her as a force in the music world. Critics described her voice as a mellow mix of jazz, gospel and R&B, and compared it to the likes of Minnie Riperton and Chaka Khan.

Now with her second album, Keep the Faith, she hopes to take her career to new heights. Two years in the making, the album, which was almost entirely written and produced by her, was tough to complete. "I was a little discouraged at first," she says. "I never really shared that with anybody, but I got discouraged about the progress of the project. I knew the album was going to come out. But my enthusiasm had kind of put the brakes on it a little bit. There were just so many things that were going on that were affecting my work and my thinking."