GOOD FAITH
R&B singer talks Lil’ Kim rivalry rumors and her love for Biggie
THE Notorious B.I.G. and Faith Evans married nine days after meeting at a Bad Boy Records photo shoot in 1994. But the whirlwind romance caused a problem for the Brooklyn rapper: how to tell his mother.
“He didn’t want me and his mother [Voletta Wallace] to meet,” Evans tells The Post. “She probably thought I was some groupie! But my daughter Chyna [then a toddler, from a previous relationship] was around quite a bit, and she saw the love I had for her. And the fact that I was a church girl [. . .] helped, too.”
It’s one of the many aspects of Faith and Biggie’s relationship addressed in Evans’ new album, “The King and I,” out Friday. It’s a collection completed with both old and new verses from the rapper born Christopher Wallace, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting 20 years ago, at the height of the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop feud that also claimed the life of Tupac Shakur.
Here, Evans, 43, talks about Biggie’s way of dealing with fights, Puff Daddy’s high standards and Lil’ Kim’s key work.
In a spoken-word segment on the album, Voletta says she was eventually happy you got married to Biggie, because he wasn’t able to take care of himself. Why was that?
He was a mama’s boy. He depended on me quite a bit. The Christmas before his death, he needed to borrow $20,000, and he knew that I was the kind of person who would always be there for him. He wasn’t even my man [Biggie was, by that point, fooling around with Lil’ Kim and Charli Baltimore] — he probably bought presents for his girlfriend! But I didn’t care what it was for. He said he needed it, so I gave it to him.
Did you ever try to hide the volatility in your marriage?
DJ Enuff [Biggie’s tour DJ] recently told me that when he used to be on the tour bus, he always knew when me and Biggie were going through it because Biggie would be playing my music, constantly. Enuff said, “Don’t get me wrong, Faith, I love your music, but 16 f-- king hours of [it] is too much!”
The recent Bad Boy documentary “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” was enjoyable if only for the chance to see Puff Daddy’s high standards and demands. Was he always like that?
Oh, yeah. Puffy’s always had high standards. Very early in my career, Puff used to walk me to the tanning salon every other day because I was pale and he wanted to tan me up! And he told me he wanted me to walk out of the house and look glamorous all the time. When he wanted me to sing “I’ll Be Missing You” at the [1997] MTV [Video Music] Awards with Sting, I didn’t want to do anything. I was still grieving. But he was like, “Listen, you ain’t about to eff my thing up.” I thought my crying would work, but he persuaded me to do it. He was right, though, because people still ask me about that performance all the time.
Is it true that Lil’ Kim scratched up your car following a fight after you caught her and Biggie together?
Me and Kim agreed to not talk about the altercations we had anymore because we have moved on. We’re doing Summer Jam this year, actually. But yeah, my Land Cruiser was pretty badly scratched up, so I just ended up getting a new one. Back then, my cars were always getting stolen, so I’d just get a different color!