25 years ago today, Faith Evans put out “Faithfully”
Her third album and last for Bad Boy debuted at No. 14 with 101,000 first-week sales, went gold, and spun "I Love You" to No. 2 R&B. Mario Winans, Buckwild and the Neptunes handled the boards.
Twenty-five years ago today, on 6 November 2001, Bad Boy and Arista put out Faithfully, Faith Evans' third studio album. It was her last record for the imprint before she left in 2003, and it arrived after nearly two years of work that started at home with her husband and manager, Todd Russaw.
Before they cut anything, Evans and Russaw spent about a year studying older records. Chicago, the S.O.S. Band, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Steely Dan and Michael Franks were on the pile. The idea was to learn how those performances were put together, then bring that feel into a contemporary R&B album. Bad Boy was between distributors at the time, and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs was busy with other projects, so the pair wrote and demoed on their own first. When they sent the songs through, Combs called them down to Miami.
Combs and in-house producer Mario Winans took most of the album. Around them sat Buckwild, the Neptunes, Battlecat, Bink, Havoc, Chucky Thompson, Michaelangelo Saulsberry, Vada Nobles and others. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were asked to contribute and declined after hearing what was already on tape. They told Vibe the material was already too strong for them to improve on. That detail mattered: the Minneapolis pair had defined black pop radio for a decade, and walking away from a Faith Evans session said plenty about how finished the record already felt. Evans later told MTV News the album reflected years of listening: "The feel is 'Faith has grown.' That's what I hope people get from it. I just been trying to get my history together."
- Released
- 6 Nov 2001 · Bad Boy / Arista
- Peaks
- No. 14 Billboard 200 · No. 2 Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums · 101,000 first week
- Certification
- RIAA gold, 10 Jan 2002 · ~834,000 US sales by April 2005
- Grammy
- Nominated Best Contemporary R&B Album
- Singles
- You Gets No Love · I Love You · Burnin' Up · Alone in This World
- Producers
- Mario Winans, Sean Combs, Buckwild, the Neptunes, Battlecat, Bink, Havoc, Chucky Thompson and others
The album opened at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 with 101,000 copies, her highest first-week figure to that point, and No. 2 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. The RIAA certified it gold on 10 January 2002 for 500,000 shipped. By April 2005 Billboard had the domestic total at about 834,000. It was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album at the Grammys.
Lead single "You Gets No Love", featuring P. Diddy and Loon, went out in July 2001 and reached about No. 28 on the Hot 100 and No. 8 on the R&B chart. "I Love You" followed in February 2002 and did better still: No. 14 Hot 100 and No. 2 R&B. Buckwild produced it over an Isaac Hayes sample of "Make a Little Love to Me". The song had originally been written with Jennifer Lopez in mind before Evans claimed it for herself. "Burnin' Up", a Neptunes track with Loon on the album version (Missy Elliott appeared on some single mixes), peaked at No. 60 on the Hot 100. "Alone in This World" closed the single run in April 2002.
Sampling sat at the centre of the record. The title track "Faithfully", produced by Battlecat, lifts Mtume's "Juicy Fruit", the same source Biggie used for "Juicy". "Alone in This World" flips Biggie's own "Who Shot Ya". "Back to Love" pulls from Indeep's "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life". The through-line was clear: Evans was folding hip-hop memory into the classic R&B schooling she and Russaw had done at home.
Critics mostly lined up behind it. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it her "grittiest, funkiest, best record to date", even while noting that it ran long. Entertainment Weekly's Craig Seymour gave it an A- and wrote that Evans moved from "earthy gospel-schooled cries to breathy ethereal coos" over lush Seventies soul orchestrations. The Independent said Faithfully was, "by some distance", her most impressive album, and that her voice dominated the proceedings. A few writers pushed back on the number of ballads and the running time. The Guardian thought some of the mid-tempo stretches were generic. Still, the consensus held that her voice was out front and the production had sharpened.
Faithfully closed her Bad Boy chapter. The First Lady followed in 2005 on Capitol. Twenty-five years on, the Miami sessions and that year of listening still sit in the grooves: a gold album, a No. 2 R&B single in "I Love You", and a Juicy Fruit sample carrying her name on the title track.
