By any standard, Faith Evans' career as a vocalist, songwriter and producer is a musical success story: four gold and platinum CD's, eleven R&B Top 10 singles, a Grammy Award and numerous hit collaborations with a dizzyingly diversified range of artists and producers (Babyface, Eric Benet, Kelly Price, Whitney Houston, Carl Thomas and country music's Shooter Jennings, to name a few). But for every achievement, there's been agony, whether it's about her controversial marriage and estrangement with the Notorious B.I.G., the rampant rumors about her dealings with his friend-turned enemy, Tupac Shakur (did she or didn't she?), her exit from Bad Boy Entertainment and that messy marijuana arrest in 2004.

Except for her 2005 hit, "Again," Ms. Evans had kept the details of her personal and professional life pretty guarded, but with a new film in the works about her late husband's life (Notorious), she finally decided that the time was now to share her side of the story. In a phone chat from her home in Los Angeles, Ms. Evans opens up about the process of co-writing Keep the Faith (with journalist Aliya S. King), where she is in the search for the truth regarding the Biggie's murder and the message she has for her "faithful" fans.

Congratulations on having a new son, Faith; how old is he now?

"Thank you! He's 17-months-old now and I'm trying to find him a daycare. I've been at home for the last few years, but now I'm like, 'Oh my God, I can't get anything done'. I love being home as opposed to traveling, but he wants all my attention and I can't even finish checking my e-mails good because he wants all my attention every five minutes (laughs). Now is definitely the time, I gotta get him in somewhere."

I've got a toddler of my own, I definitely relate. I wanted to tell you that I absolutely loved your memoir: I tore through it in one day and I found it to be very even-keeled, eloquent and inspirational.

"I'm glad to hear you say that. I definitely didn't want to come off any other way, but you know how people take things out of context. I tried my best to be honest and to also, at the end, to make the statement that I'm in a whole other place and I don't harbor any bad feelings toward anybody about anything. It's just where I was at that time in my life and what I was going through to make me make some of the decisions I made."

Did you finally feel ready to tell your story when the movie was finalized, or was there a totally different motiviation?

"Actually, I didn't think I was even ready still for a minute. I always said that the only forum I would choose to be a little more detailed about those things was when I decided to write my own story. I didn't think that time would be now because I'm only 35, but what happened was I met a book agent through a casting director that I was doing auditions with, and he asked me, 'have you ever thought of doing a book?' I told him, 'There's a lot more to my story than what you know, and I just don't think that I'm ready.' Well, two, three years went by and probably the last time he contacted me, I found out I was pregnant with my last child. I was in the mindframe of wanting to transition from my record company, and I was like, 'you know what? Maybe there is a reason.' I knew I'd be sitting still for a minute, I didn't plan on traveling, I wanted to be home with the kids. I knew also I wouldn't be working on a record, at least right this minute, so it just made sense to do it.

What was it like to write ...Faith?

The young lady, Aliya, who collaborated with me, she had a baby about a month within the time I did, so that was crazy Faith Evans - Keep the Faith---A Memoir (Book Review)(laughs). She's in NY, I'm in LA, we're on the phone, from 2 different time zones, having to sneak in conversations between the babies' naps. It was just a lot, but it was fun. I didn't go through much emotionally during the writing process, but once I was reading everything back, that's when I started to cry and laugh about everything I had gone through. I was worried about the 'Big' element and I knew that it was one othose things that people would talk about more, especially in the media. I was going back and forth with myself and then I spoke to Miss Wallace (Biggie's mother) and she said 'You should do it. People think that they know you and they don't.' It's not I'm trying to go back and open old wounds, rehash situations or what have you, but it was therapeutic and it made me look back and see how far I have come and know that those experiences are like wisdom now. A lot of things I wouldn't handle the way I did, a lot of choices I made I wouldn't have made now, but it's like a badge of honor, you know?'

How much of a hand did you have in the film Notorious (scheduled to be released in January)?

"My son is in the movie, he plays his dad between the ages of 8 and 12. As for me, I was really there to support Miss Wallace. I did go to a couple of meetings with her and the studio, but I wasn't really a part of it creatively. Whenever I was called on, I definitely helped the writers and gave them a little bit more insight. I also spent time with the actress playing my part in the movie (Antonique Smith) so she would have a better idea on how to play things out."

To keep them from portraying you negatively, perhaps?

"No, Miss Wallace doesn't see me in a bad light. I mean in regards to how certain situations played out."

Any progress in the murder investigation of the Notorious B.I.G.?

"The case is still open and we (Miss Wallace and I) are still pursuing it, but of course we're not happy with the fact that it's just been dragging on. We've been over and over again to court about the LAPD , about their negligence and their failure to fully investigate. We're really disappointed, but just in the name of principle, we have to see it through. It's not about a dollar amount at all. Whether we get zero, two cents, two dollars or 20 million, we are gonna ride it out and keep fighting."

I know things are different in the music industry these days, but when you debuted in 1995 (with Faith), you were the first female artist from a seemingly unbreakable hit machine; I remember working at a music store at that time and watching anything from Bad Boy Entertainment practically fly off the shelves. How does it feel knowing that you're forever tied to that legendary time period?

"Oh my goodness, it feels great, it was so much fun. I met my first husband and son's father there and several other people that I've got a lot of love for to this day. I'm proud to have been a part of it."

What's your status with Capitol Records now?

"I'm no longer with the label. Capitol was going through a lot of eternal changes, they got bought out. So even if I had finished another album there, I would've been disappointed because there wouldn't have been anybody there to take it under their wing. I think they're basically gonna be focusing on their catalog. It allowed me to be free, which is great, I'm enjoying it. I actually don't even want to be on a label, I love owning myself and being able to do what I want to do: if I want to record with someone, I don't have to get it approved by anybody, nobody else has to be paid a part of it, you know what I mean? It was actually God's divine order, because I wanted to be released and I didn't have to battle to make it happen."

A track of yours surfaced on the web not too long ago entitled "Maybe." Does that mean new music or any other new projects are coming soon?

"(Laughs) That one is super-old: I did that song five years ago, just messing around in my home studio in GA, more like a demo than anything. I'm not recording anything new right this minute. I'm not really in a rush: I do miss the creative process, but I really enjoy being a full-time mother. People call me all the time saying 'girl, the game needs you,' but when the right thing pesents itself, I'll be there. Probably next year will be the earliest, but it won't be anytime before that. I like keeping one thing on my plate at a time, I don't like to have too much going on. I have four kids and that's enough. I gotta get back in shape, get on my toes....(more laughter)"

Are any of your four kids looking to become entertainers?

"They all have their musicial gifts, they really do, but I don't want entertainment to be something that they focus on for a career----college comes first, and then, maybe after that. My daughter (Chyna) is a producer; she can write songs, she can produce her own tracks, she knows how to record her stuff....she's way more ahead in the game than me (laughs), but she's also a straight A student at a great school. Christopher (Biggie's son) has a great ear and he can rap, but he's too young to try and mimic his dad yet. I'm not really pushing them to be child stars."

Are you into anyone out there in the music scene right now?

"I don't wanna name names, because I like a lot of people. Any artist out there getting airplay and buiding a fanbase, no matter how small, I give it to them. Some people say 'today's music is wack now,' but I don't really feel that way."

Any parting words for your fans?

"There are still people that will go on and comment about me and try to cause drama, but I still see a lot of positivity, people saying 'oh my God, I love you, please come back, that's my girl.' I really want to impress upon my supporters that I appreciate them, it really means a lot."

Well, I'm glad that Keep the Faith is such a success for you (currently #21 on the NY Times Best Seller List). After I read it, I wanted to make sure that I got the word out about what you're up to right now and that no one, so to speak, should 'close the book' on you yet.

" See? That's what makes you my girl, right there (laughs)."

***

Courtesy of Luch from Luvland.

Nice to hear from Faith now and then.

I simply adore this dame
and even moreso (which I
didn't think was possible)
after I read the book...

hell I even listen to Keep The Faith now

Harlepolis said:

THAT'S RIGHT!!!!! SHE'S A "SANGA".....NOT A RAPPER!!!!!

Another interview:



Faith Evans: Silent No More

Thirteen years after the East Coast–West Coast rap wars, which led to the murders of her husband The Notorious B.I.G. and his former friend turned rival Tupac Shakur, Faith Evans finally speaks out. The Grammy Award winner talks exclusively to ESSENCE to set the record straight on drug abuse, ghosts from the past, and how she has found happiness with her husband and four children

By Imani Powell

There may be other working mothers chilling in Naked Sushi at two in the afternoon, but none have lived the life of Faith Evans. She leaves her black toy-filled Denali SUV, equipped with a car seat for 1½-year-old son Ryder, and smiles as she enters the trendy Marina del Rey restaurant. The place is convenient to Evans's Venice Beach home, and SoCal seems to agree with her. Freckles emphasize her sun-kissed cheeks, and her soft, golden-brown curls have been air-dried, as if she just hopped out of a swimming pool—which, in fact, she has. Without lipstick, her signature pout isn't evident, save for the beauty marks that stood out on the cover of her platinum-selling debut CD, Faith.

Today the Grammy Award—winning singer, once known for furs and shiny catsuits, pairs a casual emerald-green sundress with a white capelet and gladiator sandals. She has just dropped off her son Christopher, 11, at a local junior high school so he can take an entrance exam. If he makes the cut, next year he may don a Catholic school uniform, not unlike the costume he wears playing his dad at a young age in the film Notorious. The movie comes out in 2009 and chronicles the life and 1997 death of his father, Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G.

Placing her shades on the bar and her black Balenciaga bag aside, Faith, 35, makes conversation with the chef as he whips up her raw fish favorites, jalapeño yellowtail and spicy tuna roll, which she'll wash down with sake, a glass of Sapporo and a ginger ale. Though Faith wears a full figure well on her 5-foot, 6-inch frame, she says she's dieting. She's gearing up for the book tour for her explosive new memoir, which will briefly take her away from her husband–manager, Todd Russaw, and the children (daughter Chyna, 15, and son Joshua, 10, round out the brood). And although she's still in laid-back California mode, there's nothing calm about Keep the Faith (Grand Central Publishing), hitting shelves this month. Caution: The singer covers ground that's been widely reported in various hip-hop magazines, so the cameo appearances by rappers Lil' Kim and Charli Baltimore, Bad Boy Records impresario Sean "Puffy" Combs, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott and others will give the feeling of "been there, done that." However, it's refreshing to see what Faith saw during this music revolution through her often unheralded role as a forceful talent and leading lady in a sometimes tawdry soap opera. But why tell her story now? Faith says Russaw encouraged her to write the book (penned with Aliya S. King): "'People don't know the real story,' he told me. 'One day, you're going to have to tell it,'" she explains. "Everybody's not going to accept the real story, but it's my story."



"I DON'T LIKE BEING PLAYED"
If there's a familiar thread in Evans's life, it's her shyness and tendency to avoid confrontation, which is ironic, given her presence during some of the most explosive moments of hip-hop's heyday. Music is what took her to the hip-hop life, because it came easy to this complicated girl, born in Lakeland, Florida, to Helene Evans, a Black singer, and a music-loving man (who is rumored to be White, though Faith never met him and doesn't know for sure), and raised in Newark, New Jersey. She found her voice at Emmanuel Baptist Church Incorporated in Newark and kept on singing. "As a child I always shied away from conflict or when people were fighting," she recollects in Keeping the Faith. "I didn't really fight a whole lot. I'm not that way; I'm not trying to have bruises." Yet Faith was drawn to guys with an edge, like "J.T.," her first boyfriend, who was older, a drug dealer and abusive. While still in her teens, she dealt with an STD, had multiple abortions, and became involved with a married man. But she remained focused and earned a full ride to Fordham University in New York—only to give up her education after falling in love with Kiyamma Griffin, a local musician. When Faith learned she was pregnant, Griffin insisted she keep the child, and they moved to Los Angeles.

The relationship didn't last, and Evans returned to the East Coast, a young, gifted and broke single mom. For a time she collected welfare while living with her grandparents, but she ultimately found steady session work, earning $2,000 a week singing background on demo tapes for the likes of Al B. Sure. Her connection to Griffin eventually led her to Combs, and by 1993 she was writing songs for Usher's first album and cowriting the lyrics for Mary J. Blige's "Everyday It Rains."

Evans developed a thick skin and tough shell, even carrying an unloaded .22 in her purse. "I don't like being played, so I had to step up," Faith recalls. Her hard shell would melt when she met the man who would become her first husband at a photo shoot. She drove Biggie and Junior M.A.F.I.A. home to Brooklyn that night and caught him stealing looks at her along the way. "I'ma call you," she remembers him saying—both bold and presumptuous.

He was true to his word. As we now know, less than two months after their first meeting, Faith and Biggie drove to Rockland County, about an hour upstate from New York City, and married on August 4, 1994. She had just turned 21; he was 22. They smoked weed on the way to their wedding and stopped for greasy French fries on the way home. Soon enough they were hip-hop's royal couple, and Faith's first single, "You Used to Love Me," in 1995, was in constant rotation. Yet she was also a young woman in love, taking care of her family. Biggie was crazy about Chyna, eating Chinese takeout and running deep with his crew. Faith describes her husband as a "fun-loving Brooklyn boy." For a while, they were happy.


"I DIDN'T KNOW HIM"
The keep-it-real fairy tale would reach a darker chapter. Rumors abounded that Biggie had cut out on his wife with rapper and protégé Lil' Kim, then a member of Junior M.A.F.I.A., and Charli Baltimore, a lesser known rapper discovered by Biggie. Faith, who never let her personal life interfere with her career, focused on work. "I still had to maintain my daughter and get her to school. I was still mother hen," she says.

In 1996 Faith found it hard to turn down an offer to record a song with Tupac Shakur for a self-negotiated $25,000. Now she knows this was not the best move. "I had no idea that Tupac had been signed to Death Row Records," she writes. "He had only been out of jail a few days when we met at the Hollywood Athletic Club. I hadn't yet heard that Suge Knight had bailed him out in return for signing to the label and immediately recording an album. If I had known, I would have never in a million years agreed to it."

Her decision led to a decade-long rumor that she slept with Shakur, which she denies. Even today she becomes unsettled by the topic of Tupac, and when pushed to talk about him, a clearly rattled Faith parses her words carefully. "I didn't know him. I don't know what (motivated him). That's like speaking for someone, and with him being dead, I definitely don't like trying. I'm glad I got through it the best I could." Unfortunately, she would not see a dime of the money from the recording.

"EVERYBODY KNOWS ME AND B.I.G. HAD A BOND"
By that time her marriage to Biggie was strained. She once caught another woman in his hotel room. That same year she picked up her belongings and left their Brooklyn home altogether, opting to live out of hotels with young Chyna in tow, crashing on the couch at the group 112's Manhattan apartment, while planning to rent her own place in a Manhattan high-rise. During their separation, she would discover he was having an affair with Lil' Kim after Kim made a bold appearance on Wendy Williams's popular radio show. Faith called the radio show afterward and defended herself.

Still in love, she and Biggie had occasional romantic reunions, which resulted in the birth of their son Christopher. "Everybody that knows me and knew B.I.G. knew that we had a bond," says Faith, who was confident that they would patch things up—until that fateful March night in 1997 when a gunman pulled up alongside Biggie's car while he was waiting at a traffic light. A somber Faith would put her music career on hold until she was tapped later that year along with Combs and 112 to do a tribute to Biggie, a single titled "I'll Be Missing You." Eventually she returned to recording and began dating Russaw, the friend who had comforted her on the night of Biggie's death.

"I HAVE FOUR KIDS AND I OWE THE GOVERNMENT"
In 2005, when Evans signed with Capitol Records, she had been married to Russaw for seven years. "(Our relationship) was definitely something I started to lean on a lot," she says. "He was one of the few people that really understood me."

Life wasn't exactly drama-free. In January 2004, she and Russaw were arrested in Hapeville, Georgia, with marijuana and cocaine in their car. The couple agreed to enter a 13-week drug intervention program, and after completion the charges were dropped. Still, rumors spread that she was on drugs, which she addressed in "Again," the first single from her 2005 album "The First Lady."

But today it looks like Faith has her priorities straight. Number one is her family. As the waitress brings the to-go sushi rolls ordered for Chyna, Faith speaks happily about her life. "Other than the times I take the kids to school and pick them up or go to the grocery store, I'm usually at home," she says. Although she parted from Los Angeles–based Capitol Records and has no label, she's staying on the West Coast. "There's something about seeing the ocean every day that I love," she says, smiling. This calm helps keep the haters out of sight and out of mind. "Do you know how many different opinions and off-the-wall stories (I hear)? Like, 'I heard she's doing bad and she's about to sell her house.' I'm just making smarter choices. I'm not trying to have a new car every six months like I used to. I have four kids and I owe the government, and I've got to save up to pay my bills."

She's a little bit older, and a lot wiser. "With experience, intelligence turns into wisdom," she says. She pauses for a moment. "Every decision, every option, every choice has to be really based around if it makes sense for my family. We don't even have a babysitter. I enjoy being able to be that person and no one else." With that, she settles into her Denali and drives off down the long and winding California road that could easily parallel her life.


Source: Essence Magazine