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Dec 16th
Photo: J. Louis
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Following the release of her her sixth studio album, Incomparable, Faith Evans already has big ideas for her next effort: a joint album with her late husband and rapper, Notorious B.I.G. The former Bad Boy artist tells ABC News Radio she's been contemplating a duets project for years.

"I've been saying to Ms. Wallace for about ten years, like, 'One day I think it would be really good, I want to do a duets album with just me and him.' And I think with this being the 20-year anniversary of Ready to Die and Bad Boy and there was just something in me like, 'You know I think that maybe we should go ahead and see about doing this deal,'" Evans says.

"My attorneys and I met with the people that own the masters and have his catalog and they were just as, if not more than, excited about it than me," Evans continues. "So that's actually going to be my next album, once I'm done promoting Incomparable and come off a tour hopefully next year, but I've already started formulating a lot of the ideas but I'll get in the studio in a few months."

Evans says the duet album, titled The King & I, is due out next year, and hints the project will be reminiscent of Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole's 1991 album, Unforgettable...with Love.

"Very much similar to what Natalie Cole did with her dad, you know, some songs will be him rapping more than me singing and some songs will be me singing and maybe him just rapping on the bridge," says Evans.

The singer says she plans to record previously unreleased verses from the slain rapper, who was killed in 1997 during a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles.

"I really plan on constructing completely new renditions of the verses of his that I do use. Because most of it, there's not much of his stuff that hasn't been heard or released, but the way I plan on approaching it, it's going to be really good," Faith says.

To honor his legacy, the singer intends to record the set in the late rapper's hometown of Brooklyn, New York -- and may film the project, as well.

"I want to record it in New York, just to kind of be able to be around the element that we were both in at that time and be around Lil Cease and all the guys that I enjoy being with and we get together and talk about Big and I think that's gonna heighten the experience, with me being able to capture it and film it and do a documentary on it, you know, I got a lot of things planned for it," says Faith.

The last time she and Biggie shared the same beat was on Diddy's 2005 project Duets: The Final Chapter.

"I've been saying to Ms. Wallace for about ten years, like, 'One day I think it would be really good, I want to do a duets album with just me and him.'

As in, "One day, when my career's gone off the boil a bit and I need a sure-fire nostalgia project to appeal to the album-purchasing 35+ demographic that were teenagers twenty years ago...."