Anniversaries: Faith by Faith Evans

At its release, it announced Faith Evans as a major new voice in R&B, equipped with songwriting and the vocal chops to dominate the scene. It’s as close to perfect as you can get for a debut album.

Courtesy of Bad Boy/Arista.

Faith Evans’s career plays out like a behind-the-scenes virtuoso finally stepping into the spotlight. Long before her name adorned a platinum record, Evans earned a quiet renown in R&B circles as a songwriter and background vocalist for marquee artists – crafting songs for the likes of Mary J. Blige, Al B. Sure!, Pebbles, and Christopher Williams, among others. In the early ‘90s, Evans’s pen and voice were secret weapons on other people’s hits: she co-wrote multiple tracks on Usher’s 1994 debut and lent her vocals to projects by Hi-Five and Christopher Williams. These gigs gave the Newark-bred singer a top-flight résumé in the industry and honed her songwriting chops before she ever recorded a note of her own. By 1994, Sean “Puffy” Combs (ugh, we know) had taken notice of her talent and signed Evans as the first female artist on his Bad Boy label. With that, Evans moved from the background into center stage, bringing with her a deep well of experience in crafting R&B narratives. This experience would shape Faith into a remarkably assured debut.

Released in late August 1995 on Bad Boy/Arista, Faith arrived amid the golden era of hip-hop soul. Evans was already part of the Bad Boy family—he’d married labelmate Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace a year prior—and had even notched an early taste of the limelight singing on Biggie’s hit “One More Chance (Stay With Me)” remix. But Faith was her true introduction as a solo artist, and it confidently fused the streets and the sanctuary, the grit of hip-hop beats and the uplift of gospel. The album is packed with “sensual, smoky R&B torch songs” and “titanium-hard hip-hop beats,” positioning Evans to stand atop the heap of young soul divas. In other words, Faith was built on the hip-hop-inflected funk foundations laid by trailblazers like Mary J. Blige, but Evans put her stamp on it—a lush, polished sound that balanced streetwise bounce with heartfelt romance in equal measure.

Faith announces its mission. “No Other Love,” the album’s hip-hop-soaked opener, rides on a chunky Isaac Hayes sample (“Walk On By”), immediately establishing a head-nodding funk groove. Evans’s voice glides over the top with conviction—“No other love, I’m thinkin’ of/No other love can measure,” she proclaims, her vocal power elevating what could be a simple love song into something almost devotional. As later noted, the lyrics can be heard as a double meaning—Evans could be singing about a man, or about the Almighty. That was part of her secret sauce: a gospel-bred ability to make secular R&B feel sacred. It’s no surprise, considering Evans first started singing in church as a toddler in Newark and grew up steeped in gospel tradition. Producer Chucky Thompson, Bad Boy’s main R&B hitmaker, observed that while Mary J. Blige’s vibe was more rooted in ‘70s quiet-storm soul, “Faith was a totally different vibe… more gospel.”

On Faith, that “anointed energy” is perceptible. Evans’s vocals throughout the album are laced with the melismatic runs and heartfelt urgency of church music, even as the tracks bump with contemporary beats. The album’s core producers, Puff Daddy and Chucky Thompson of the Hitmen, lay down sumptuous mid-‘90s R&B backdrops: slow-burning basslines, rich keyboard chords, and hip-hop breakbeats. Evans builds on those foundations with songwriting that feels both intensely personal and universally relatable. Having written hits for others, she brought a confident pen to her material, co-writing nearly every song on Faith. That gave the album a cohesive voice, her voice, running through it. Whether she’s vulnerable, pleading, or empowered, Evans’s personality shines in the lyrics. The years apprenticing under R&B royalty clearly imbued her with storytelling savvy and the confidence to pen songs that stand up to anything she wrote for others.

The album flows gracefully between simmering grooves and sultry ballads, showing off both sides of Evans’s musicality. The lead single “You Used to Love Me” remains a jewel of 90s R&B, a midtempo jam powered by a knocking beat and velvet-smooth piano loops. Interestingly, Puff and Chucky Thompson originally crafted this song for the girl group Total, but Evans made it her signature track. Listening now, it’s hard to imagine anyone else singing it. Evans delivers a subtly powerful vocal, controlled and honeyed on the verses, then soaring as she confronts a lover’s fading affection. The song’s bridge still raises chills: “You can’t deny what I’m feelin’, it’s real/And I stood right by your side/Went through all the hurt and pain/Then you turned and walked away.” In those lines, a lyrical climax of heartbreak and indignation, you hear the confidence of a woman who knows her worth even as she pleads for respect. Direct lines that cut to the heart of an emotional situation, elevated by the devotion of her delivery.

“Soon as I Get Home” supplied the quiet storm. This sumptuous ballad was the song Evans herself was most excited about recording. She practically begged Puff Daddy to let Chucky Thompson produce it, sensing it could be something special. Her instincts were spot on. “Soon as I Get Home” is an elegant slow jam, built on satin sheets of keyboard and a gently swaying beat, over which Evans pledges devotion and recompense to her loved one: “Soon as I get home/I’ll make it up to you/Baby I’ll do what I gotta do,” she promises in the chorus. Given that Evans was newly married to Biggie and often separated by the demands of fame, the song carried personal weight—it’s filled with longing to reunite and set things right. Evans sings it like a lullaby mixed with a prayer, every note soaked in yearning. The simplicity of the hook belies the depth of feeling; as an ode to commitment and apology, it rang true with many listeners and helped propel the album’s success. Even today, “Soon as I Get Home” stands out as one of the era’s definitive R&B ballads, its romance and warmth undimmed by time.

Beyond its two big hits, Faith offers a rich collection of tracks that blur the line between the club, the bedroom, and the church pew. “Ain’t Nobody,” for instance, brings an upbeat, head-bobbing energy with its bouncing percussion and call-and-response hook. The song is imbued with gospel’s imprint even as Evans proclaims steadfast love. She testifies, “Ain’t nobody who can love me like you do,” backed by swelling strings and a funky guitar lick, sounding like she’s leading a congregation, until the story takes a turn. Evans’s background as a songwriter for others also manifests in the album’s deep cuts, many of which she co-wrote in collaboration with R&B peers. “Fallin’ in Love,” for example, has Mary J. Blige listed as a co-writer, effectively passing the torch from one queen of hip-hop soul to the next. Fittingly, the track is built on a sample of Patrice Rushen’s “Remind Me”—a funk groove that had also underpinned Mary J.’s early hit “You Remind Me.” Over this familiar silky bassline, Evans and Blige (along with co-writer Gordon Chambers) craft a mellow, romantic jam.

Likewise, “Come Over” stands as one of the album’s high points—a slow-burning seduction that doubles as a vocal showcase. Thompson, who produced it, drew inspiration from the gospel stylings of The Clark Sisters for this song. You can hear that influence in the way “Come Over” builds with a quiet organ underpinning Evans’s pleading verse, then the chorus blossoms with “Won’t you come over and make love to me, ‘cause I haven’t seen you in a while,” delivered in layered, churchy harmonies. The arrangement is almost hymn-like in its simplicity and emotional punch. Evans’s voice, multitracked into a small choir, creates a wall of soul that is both sensual and reverent. It’s a brilliant melding of Sunday-morning reverence with Saturday-night desire—illustrating again how Evans’s gospel grounding gave her R&B an extra dimension of depth.

Faith peppers in interludes that further highlight the singer’s roots and intentions. The brief introductory track “Faith (Interlude)” and the mid-album a cappella snippet “You Are My Joy (Interlude)” function almost like palate cleansers between the fuller songs – quick reminders of Evans’s pure vocal talent and spiritual foundation. In “You Are My Joy,” she sings of the love of her life being her inspiration, words that could be directed to a lover or God, reinforcing the dual nature of her muse. And at the album’s midpoint comes “Thank You Lord (Interlude),” a 55-second praise to God that leaves no ambiguity. Backed only by gentle piano, Evans delivers a heartfelt gospel thank-you straight to the heavens, boldly placing her faith (both the album’s title and her namesake) at the center of her art. In a way, these interludes tie the project together, making explicit the gospel undercurrent running through Faith, showing that Evans’s confidence and emotive power stem from something profoundly personal. It was somewhat unusual at the time for an R&B album to stop the party and go to church so literally, but for Evans, it was essential, and it adds to the timeless quality of the record. Even as R&B production styles have evolved, the sincerity of a moment like “Thank You Lord” keeps Faith feeling genuine and grounded.

Not every track on Faith hits with the same force as the big singles; a few songs are content to play within the standard 90s R&B template, yet there’s remarkably little filler across the 15 tracks. The album’s closer, “Reasons” (a CD-only bonus track), is a smooth, slow groove that perhaps didn’t make a huge impact, but it’s expertly crafted, with Evans cooing pledges of devotion over a warm bed of bass and Rhodes piano. “Don’t Be Afraid,” produced by Herb Middleton (one of the only cuts not helmed by Combs/Thompson), might be considered a lesser moment simply because it wasn’t as visible, but it’s a quietly striking midtempo number. Co-written by Evans with Latrice Shaw, “Don’t Be Afraid” blends a gentle new-jack-swing-meets-soul vibe, and in retrospect, it stands up nicely, so much so that one ranking of her catalog cites “Don’t Be Afraid” among the album’s treasured deep cuts. If anything, listening to Faith now stresses how consistently strong the material is. Even tracks that weren’t hits, like the melancholy “You Don’t Understand” (where Evans vents heartbreak to a lover who just can’t see her perspective), feel fully realized and emotionally resonant. Evans’s background work for others clearly taught her how to avoid the fluff and stick to what matters—every song earns its place, and that’s a big reason the album still plays so well today.

We also see the blueprint of Evans’s evolution as an artist. The album introduced “The First Lady of Bad Boy” as a fully-formed talent—a singer-songwriter with a clear artistic identity. She would build on that identity in subsequent albums, taking even more creative control (by her second album Keep the Faith in 1998, she was writing and producing much of the material herself). But the confidence and personality she displayed on Faith were born from her years behind the scenes and blossomed in these tracks. The record reveals a young woman who had learned from writing for others exactly how to express herself. It’s telling that Faith was later celebrated as Bad Boy’s finest R&B release, and that Evans continued to thrive and adapt through the years, from hip-hop soul torch-bearer to sultry adult R&B songstress, without ever losing the “righteous” vocal foundation she laid down on her debut. Faith captures the moment Faith Evans went from supporting player to star, and she did so with an album that still feels like a statement of artistic purpose. At its release, it announced Evans as a major new voice in R&B, equipped with songwriting and the vocal chops to dominate the scene. It’s as close to perfect as you can get for a debut album.