Faith Evans

A greatly admired soul singer, Faith Evans is also one of America's most versatile talents with a varied career as a writer, actress and producer. Born in Florida but raised in a Christian family in New Jersey, Evans was strongly influenced by the congregational singing at her local Baptist church. At university she acted in theatre and sang mainly jazz, but attracted the attention of Puff Daddy while singing backing vocals with Al B Sure and Christopher Williams. She became the first female act signed to Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Entertainment label, acquiring the epithet The First Lady Of Hip Hop. Collaborating with the likes of Mary J. Blige and Carl Thomas, she released three highly successful albums on Bad Boy - Faith (1995), Keep The Faith (1998) and Faithfully (2001). After a whirlwind romance in 1994, she married the great rapper The Notorious B.I.G., who was killed in a mysterious drive-by shooting three years later as the west-east coast rap rivalry escalated into tragedy. Evans later had a hit - and a Grammy Award - singing I'll Be Missing You, with Puff Daddy and 112, in tribute to her late husband. After leaving Bad Boy, she signed to Capitol and, broadening her style and working with a series of different producers including Pharrell Williams and Chucky Thompson, came out with her most successful album The First Lady (2005). A Christmas album followed, but she then took an extended break before returning with Something About Faith (2010), which included another major hit, Gone Already. She also appeared in various TV shows like The Fighting Temptations, penned her colourful autobiography Keep The Faith: A Memoir and, in 2012, released the album R&B Divas.