UB Celebrates: Faith Evans ‘You Used to Love Me’ Turns 25
This week 25 years ago, Faith Evans debuted with her single “You Used To Love Me” on Bad Boy/Arista.
A top Five R&B/hip-hop single “You Used to Love Me” propelled Faith‘s debut album along with “Soon As I Get Home” to platinum status.
From 1992 through 1994, she wrote songs and/or sang backup for Al B. Sure!, Hi-Five, Christopher Williams, Usher, and Mary J. Blige. While working on Usher, for which she co-wrote six songs and sang backup. Faith was then was offered a Bad Boy contract by Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Diddy had a unique description for Faith‘s vocal style. “When I listen to Faith sing, I think of rain,” he says. “It covers so many emotions. There’s so many aspects to rain — there’s good rain and bad rain.”
The story of Faith goes a little something like this…Faith racked up more in her young life than people who were more than twice her age. A lot happened since she was a little girl in Newark, New Jersey. By the tender age of four, Faith figures out she could blow from the tears her gospel renditions evoked from her church’s congregation.
Even as a high school honor student who went on to earn a full academic scholarship to Fordham University, Faith Evans knew she was born to sing. She left Fordham after a year and ended up doing background vocals and writing songs for the likes of Mary J. Blige, Pebbles and Christopher Williams. Later, she met a man named Puff Daddy.
“I don’t mind being compared to anybody. Especially not her [Mary]. I have no reason to not want to be compared. I mean, Mary sold four or five million records. That’s not a bad thing. The only downside is, I started to think, ‘Well, it’s not bad that people are comparing me, but do they hear that there’s a difference at all?” – BRE Magazine (1995)
Faith‘s debut album got jump-started with “You Used To Love Me.” Tri-State area radio started to pump “Falling In Love Again,” while quiet storms were rotating her cover of Rose Royce‘s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” a duet with Mary J. Blige originally.
When told she was a young women with an old soul by BRE, Faith laughed. “Everybody says that to me. It’s not something I purposely do. My sound may be like old school probably because I have a really good ear. And I listen to everything. I think sometimes I’m too critical and analytical when it comes to my music. I always strive for that perfection.”
Happy 25 “You Used to Love Me.”
UB ReVisit: Faith Evans Talks 90s Music, Catalog and R&B Divas
