Bonus Post #8

Okay, I lied, I have one.

My Gut Reaction: Faith Evans and The Notorious B.I.G. - The King & I (May 19, 2017)

When R&B singer-slash-songwriter Faith Evans announced that she would be releasing a joint album with her late husband, rapper The Notorious B.I.G., in 2017, twenty years after his passing, the hip hop community grew worried. What could this possibly be, aside from a blatant cash grab? Biggie didn’t exactly have a ton of unreleased songs and verses locked away in the vaults: pretty much everything the man ever recorded has popped up somewhere, whether it be as guest vocals on outside projects, mixtapes, or on the two posthumous compilations his label boss Puff Daddy MacGuyver’d together with Scotch tape, pre-chewed gum, current-day beats, and many many many guest cameos from artists Biggie likely wouldn’t have worked with during his lifetime (he had a personal rule that he would only collaborate with rappers he respected).

On paper, The King & I sounds like Puffy’s third try at putting together a Biggie album without anything new from Biggie to include, as the late rapper’s contributions to the project consist of vocals taken from older songs (and, in a few instances, reference vocals he recorded for his own artists). However, there are two main differences to note here: (1) The King & I is a Faith Evans album, not a Sean Combs album, as Puffy barely offers anything here - likely he signed off on the use of the samples, tinkered a bit in the studio, and that’s literally all; and (2) The King & I was not released on Bad Boy Records, as Faith hadn’t been signed to the label in nearly fifteen years at this point.

Seemingly because she knew The King & I sounded like it was just a terrible idea, Faith did everything she could to stack the odds in her favor. For the most part, the album traces the early, flirty days of their relationship and marriage, with one glaring exception which we will get to when we get to it. Not content with sitting on the sidelines, she handles production on nearly every single song, as this is her album, contributing alongside some big names such as DJ Premier, Salaam Remi, and a couple members of Puffy’s Hitmen production team. Not merely content with sampling Biggie’s vocals, she wrote actual songs with concepts around said vocals, in order to keep the audience engaged (if not aghast at the sheer audacity). And, opposed to Puffy’s open-door policy, Faith Evans keeps the guest list to a minimum, limited to folks Biggie had actually worked with while he was still with us, folks that played a role in the formation of The Notorious B.I.G.’s short-lived career.

The King & I ultimately whiffed at the box office, as hip hop heads were not on the lookout for yet another reminder that Biggie didn’t have the deep bench his rival 2Pac had at the time of his own passing. But streaming music is still a thing that exists, so let’s see if Faith’s dedication to her late husband is as loving as she hoped it would be.

1. A BILLION

Not so much an album intro as it is a mission statement, a thesis from Faith Evans, one which informs the listener of her true intent with this project. If The King & I was created purely out of love for her late husband, that would make this more difficult to critique, right?

2. LEGACY

I think I would have liked “Legacy” more if it were just a Faith Evans song, honestly. Stevie J., the former Bad Boy Hitman who married Faith in 2018 (I know, your head just exploded, it’s okay), lends production that is entirely sappy R&B shit, but Evans suits it well, with vocals expressing how her life was positively inspired by having Biggie in her life. That part of “Legacy” is rather sweet. The rest of this shit, however, is a toss-up, as Stevie and Faith felt that recycling some B.I.G. bars from “Would You Die For Me” (from Born Again) would somehow fit the proceedings. To their credit, Biggie’s vocals are edited so that future generations can be tricked into believing he was working around an agreed-upon theme, but if you’re already familiar with the original song, this shit just doesn’t work. Curiously, a Puff Daddy line from “I’ll Be Missing You” is also reused (but not by Puff himself, unless his voice sounds a lot different now). Faith also spits a couple of bars instead of letting Lil Kim's contribution to the original song fly, which she has zero business doing here. The contradictory nature of “Legacy” was both silly and tricky to say anything negative about, even though the song isn’t very good.

3. BEAUTIFUL (INTERLUDE)

Biggie and Faith used to really love one another. (*cue studio audience*) Awwwwwwww.

4. CAN’T GET ENOUGH

I actually really liked the instrumental on “Can’t Get Enough”, which is credited to Faith, James Poyser, and Salaam Remi: it sounds like it’s approaching a neo-1990s R&B vibe successfully. But the song itself was hilariously filthy and uncomfortable, as the B.I.G. vocals (taken from Luke’s “Bust a Nut”, which is about exactly what you’re thinking right now) detail trysts with promiscuous women in a very explicit fashion), while Faith tries to make all of this seem like he was merely talking about their own kinky sex life. (At one point he talks about ejaculating into a woman’s eyes, and Faith literally responds with, “Do it.” Seriously.) She seems game, though, throwing in enough of her own freaky details to convincingly play the role, but for the most part “Can’t Get Enough” is so much of a reach that she must have popped both arms out of their sockets while recording this shit. Such a shame, too, as the beat was really good.

5. DON’T TEST ME

Don’t get me wrong, “Don’t Test me” is still a misguided mash-up, but it’s one I sound somewhat… charming? Faith rearranges Biggie’s vocals from Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s “Gettin’ Money (The Get Money Remix)” so that she can “interact” with them in a playful manner, and by gum, the conceit almost pays off, thanks to Salaam Remi’s simplistic-but-banging instrumental and Faith’s straight-faced antics. B.I.G.’s vocals don’t exactly fit over the breakbeat, but Evans carries the track through her efforts, making it clear that even if The King & I is just a cash-in, it’s one with at least some thought put into the work. I… didn’t hate this?

6. BIG / FAYE (INTERLUDE) (FEAT. JAMAL WOOLARD)

Kind of weird, in that the rapper-slash-actor Jamal “Gravy” Woolard, who portrayed Biggie in the biopic Notorious (and again in the 2Pac movie All Eyez On Me), again plays the role while Faith is, um, Faith, but I can see what she was trying to do, and I suppose there wouldn’t have been any audio of the real conversations these two had available.

7. TRYNA GET BY

The first absolute misfire of the evening, and yet there was still a fascinating component to be found on “Tryna Get By”. The J. Drew Sheard II production feels so brittle that it collapses underneath the weight of the vocals, which receive more than just a side-eye from me anyway, between Faith Evans nearly breaking into the theme song from The Facts Of Life throughout and the wholesale theft of Biggie’s vocals from “Sky’s The Limit”. I applaud the fact that Faith doesn’t stray too far from her late husband’s original theme, merely adding a layer of wanting to stay out of trouble while trying to achieve their dreams, even if her performance isn’t quite so hot. The very end of “Tryna Get By” betrays its source material by including Biggie’s reference vocals for 112’s hook from “Sky’s The Limit”, which, while it makes perfect sense that he would have recorded this because he did write the song, after all, I had never given it all that much thought before, and now it’s all I can think about. So that was cool, I guess. Song sucks, though.

8. THE REASON

Not only does producer Just Blaze inject some much-needed energy into the proceedings, he also cribs from some Biggie vocals that a lot of you have likely never heard before: his two verses from the Aaron Hall song “Why You Tryin’ To Play Me” make up the bulk of “The Reason”, with Faith Evans filling out the rest of the run time with her vocals, which, while pretty damn good, are also kind of fucking hilarious, as she ends up being the person adding the explicit lyrics to the track and not her late husband (Biggie had graciously provided Aaron Hall a curse-free performance). This is more of what I had hoped The King & I would sound like: lesser-known verses paired up with Faith putting in her two cents. That’s not what we get on the rest of this album, but “The Reason” could have been a sleeper, folks.

9. I DON’T WANT IT (FEAT. LIL CEASE)

Faith Evans’ complete and utter disrespect for Lil’ Kimberly continues on “I Don’t Want It”, a Beatnick Dee/Faith/Fredwreck  production (an intriguing combination, really) that borrows Biggie’s reference vocals for both Kim and Lil Cease’s verses for Kim’s “We Don’t Need It”, but while Caesar’s B.I.G. vocals play out essentially in full, Kimberly’s bars are severely truncated, to the point where Faith simply takes over and rap-sings her own shit, and then to add insult to injury, fucking Lil Cease himself pops up to drop a few newly-recorded bars of his own. The shade of it all., I get that our host was simply trying to tell the listener that she’s not interested in fucking around, she’s looking for a long-term thing, but I’m not convinced this particular song was the vest vehicle to help her get her point across.

10. I GOT MARRIED (INTERLUDE) (FEAT. MAMA WALLACE)

This long-ass interlude brings Christopher’s mother Violetta Wallace in on the action, as she tells a story about the first time she ever spoke to Faith, an event that took place after they had already gotten married. It’s cute, but unnecessary.

11. TEN WIFE COMMANDMENTS

This is the first song from The King & I that I ever paid attention to (it was one of the singles released from the project), and it immediately turned me off, as it encompassed everything I feared from a posthumous Biggie album. Listening to it again today, I feel I could be less harsh, but it still wasn’t a good idea: Sheard’s beat jacks and also reinterprets DJ Premier’s work from B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments”, which our host than uses as a springboard to jump into what she believes to be ten things couples should work on in order to keep their marriages thriving. At least Biggie’s vocals are kept to a minimum here: as his original song was about the ins and outs of selling drugs, they wouldn’t have made all that much sense here anyway. And Faith does manage to come up with ten “commandments” of sorts. So it wasn’t a complete waste of time, although I still don’t like this song and wish it had never been born, but what can you do?

12. WE JUST CLICKED (INTERLUDE) (FEAT. MAMA WALLACE)

Maybe this long-ass month has exhausted me to the point where I find schmaltzy shit endearing, but I liked Violetta’s continuation of her story, especially when she reveals that Biggie used to refer to Faith as “Fate”. It’s kind of sweet, really.

13. A LITTLE ROMANCE

I haven’t yet decided if it’s empowering or just weird and sad that Faith Evans is repurposing all of these Biggie sex raps and making them about her when they clearly weren’t written that way. Anywho, calling this Battlecat production “A Little Romance” is LOL funny, as it uses the vocals form “Fuckin’ You Tonight” (just B.I.G.’s, not R. Kelly’s, which is nice), and both husband and wife manage to get extra filthy on here. I still appreciate how Faith’s vocals “respond” to Biggie thanks to the magic of editing, but this song really wasn’t that good.

14. THE BADDEST (INTERLUDE)

…

15. FOOL FOR YOU

After a brief intro that incorporates a couple of sound bites from Biggie’s “Unbelievable”, Faith Evans sneaks a solo song on to The King & I, one produced by Chucky Thompson, another one of Puff Daddy’s production Hitmen, and honestly, it isn’t bad. It’s your typical love song, but our host performs it well, and the underlying music is slow, but upbeat, helping push the sentiment over with the audience. Although she’s (likely) singing about being with Biggie, his name is never once mentioned, so feel free to use this one for your first dance as a married couple, you two. (I realize that last sentence implies my two readers will eventually meet and fall in love with one another, in which case, that’s fucking awesome, but I’m really just trying to be funny here.)

16. CRAZY (INTERLUDE) (FEAT. 112 & MAMA WALLACE)

I suppose the real question is whether Faith actually convinced 112 to contribute new vocals here, of if they came from the depths of the Bad Boy vault. Either way, I’m going to go listen to 112’s first two albums now, so thanks for that.

17. GOT ME TWISTED

Faith Evans singing over the music from Biggie’s “Things Done Changed” sounds like another awful idea, but in execution it’s fairly entertaining: hell, this could have easily been a minor hit had it been released during her tenure on Bad Boy. Puff Daddy scores a production credit here (alongside J. Dub and Evans herself), but I’m unsure of what he actually contributed, and B.I.G.’s vocals are kept to the bare minimum, so this is Evans’ track to lose, and her justification for leaving a partner she was more than loyal to, as relayed here in song form, really wasn’t that bad. It reminded me of when she and Carl Thomas sang a song over Dr. Dre’s beat for The Firm’s “Phone Tap”. Remember that shit? This is just like that, except it also isn’t. What even is happening right now? I think this month has somehow driven me insane.

18. WHEN WE PARTY (FEAT. SNOOP DOGG)

A bit of a bait-and-switch, as “When We Party” was also a single, albeit one that promises more of Biggie’s influence than Faith’s, as she merrily sings choruses and bridges. This Salaam Remi/James Poyser production wasn’t terrible, although it definitely wasn’t necessary: “When We Party” merely repurposes B.I.G.’s “Going Back To Cali” with guest rapper Snoop Dogg, chiming in with his own pro-California propaganda while Evans adds what she can to keep the party atmosphere alive. You wouldn’t shut it off if you heard it, but you also would never seek this one out in the first place.

19. SOMEBODY KNOWS (FEAT. BUSTA RHYMES)

Holy shit, I did not expect The King & I to spin off in this direction. Over a Poyser and Remi beat that doesn’t quite work but I’m going to let it slide for reasons that will become apparent momentarily, Faith Evans opens up about the sadness and frustration she still experiences regarding the unsolved murder of her husband, With some Biggie sound bites from “Who Shot Ya?” to punctuate, Faith goes the extra mile, expressing both her pain and anger at the fact that she still doesn’t have closure after twenty fucking years. There’s no questioning her emotions here, folks. And then Busta motherfucking Rhymes, who had worked with The Notorious B.I.G. during his lifetime, ends things with a somber verse that is easily one of the best I’ve ever heard from the guy, as he offers his own condolences and relates some thoughts on the loss of a friend and colleague. I had no clue The King & I was going to go there, and I’m not bullshitting you here, Faith is good and Trevor is fantastic.

20. TAKE ME THERE (FEAT. SHEEK LOUCH & STYLES P)

The ghost of Biggie Smalls only contributes some reference vocals form a song he once wrote for Lil Kim (“Drugs”, for those of you at home keeping score) to the Just Blaze production “Take Me There”, which should have sounded harder given the producer and the guests involved (Kimberly, however, is nowhere to be found, again), but oh well. Two-thirds of The Lox chime in with their separate verses (don’t work, folks, Jadakiss will pop up in a bit, he was trying to find a parking space close to the studio), with the always-hardworking Sheek Louch making me laugh audibly as he describes himself as a “gun toter, Barack Obam’ voter / Recently Hillary supporter”, which, come on, that’s just fucking funny. Styles P is less engaging, while our host sticks with just hook duties. Not the best song in the world, but now you have the image of Sheek keeping that thing on him while standing in a long-ass line to vote Democratic in New York City, so you’re welcome. (And if you’re a Trump supporter using Sheek’s bars as your argument to discredit the liberal left, well, go fuck yourself. Democrats own guns too – why is it so easy for the GOP and the NRA to forget that shit?)

21. ONE IN THE SAME

You won’t ever be able to convince me that producers James Poyser and Salaam Remi weren’t at least influenced by Fleetwood Mac’s “Seven Wonders” for their beat on “One In The Same”, but that’s not a complaint, as I really like that song, I don’t like this track’s title, however: as a grammar nerd I can only see that Faith clearly meant “One and the Same” (even though the titular phrase is also used today, I will admit, even though it’s incorrect), and it fucking irks me. Biggie’s bars from “Respect” fit well over the production, as do Faith’s lovely vocals dedicated to the son she shares with Christopher Wallace. Get past the issue I had with the song title and you’ll find a rather sweet song.

22. I WISH (INTERLUDE) (FEAT. KEVIN MCCALL & CHYNA TAHJERE)

A brief musical interlude that sounds just fine, but didn’t really need to be here.

23. LOVIN’ YOU FOR LIFE (FEAT. LIL KIM)

Faith tries to make up for all of her slights against Lil’ Kimberly Jones by inviting her to perform on “Lovin’ You For Life”, which must have been an… interesting studio session, given her own history with Evans’ husband. I didn’t mind the beat: MyGuyMars’ work was more pensive than the rest of The King & I and worked for the general thought of missing your loved ones, even if Biggie’s vocals (from “Miss U”) were about his feelings for a fallen friend, while Kim and Faith are talking about B.I.G. himself. I appreciate that Faith trusted the audience enough to not pretend that Lil Kim wasn’t a large part of the Biggie Smalls story: leaving her off of the project entirely would have been disrespectful to the man’s legacy. Still, though, you don’t see Charli Baltimore popping up on The King & I, do you? Faith Evans has her limits, people.

24. NYC (FEAT. JADAKISS)

Kiss finally arrives to the party on “NYC”, a DJ Premier-produced sluice of melodic boom-bap (circa 2017, so temper your expectations) that exposes the shortcomings of building a song around a vocal sample, as B.I.G.’s bars (taken from a freestyle colloquially known as “Mumbling and Whispering”) seems to be on an entirely different planet than Faith or Jadakiss, who try their hardest to turn this shit into an ode to New York City even though Biggie never references that shit at all, ever. “NYC” could have worked had Faith hadn’t tried to sell it as a collaboration between herself and her late husband: on here, a little of Biggie goes a long way. Kiss also refers to Faith as “Fizzy” on here, the second such time that happens on The King & I, which was fun.

25. IT WAS WORTH IT

Essentially the outro, although Faith belts her heart out over the Stevie J production, providing listeners the closure she herself may never receive. And with that, we’re out.

THE LAST WORD: The King & I sounds fucking terrible on paper, and when I first heard about the project I wasn’t entirely convinced it was something that absolutely needed to exist. It still isn’t, but now that I’ve sat with the album, I feel more comfortable with it, as it is definitely a Faith Evans album that happens to simply feature multiple vocal samples from the late Notorious B.I.G. It definitely isn’t perfect, great, or even good: at times a lot of this is Mystery Science Theater 3000. Most of the instrumentals are far weaker than anything Biggie would have ever chosen for himself, and I’m counting that DJ Premier beat in with that description. But a lot of the music is a good fit for Faith, the actual star of the show, who attempts to find her own sense of closure through The King & I’s twenty-five tracks, and for the most part she does well. Unlike Puff Daddy’s two crappy cash-ins, The King & I plays more as Faith paying her respects to her late husband, an artist she didn’t get the opportunity to work with extensively during his lifetime, and her sincerity is far more genuine than anything Puffy was ever able to conjure up. (Admittedly, part of this is due to the fact that The King & I was not released by Bad Boy Records.) Some of the songs even manage to work on their own on a level slightly above “curiosity piece”: “Somebody Knows” is rather devastating; “The Reason” was an unexpected delight; and “Fool For You” is just a Faith solo song, but it still sounds pretty fucking good. At least Evans put some effort into this project, producing nearly every track and singing on each song, keeping the guest list to a minimum so as not to overshadow the relationship between the two leads. I can’t honestly say anyone needs to seek The King & I out, but it is a better, more fully-formed project than Born Again or Duets: The Final Chapter: even though it is similar to both of those posthumous efforts in theory, Faith manages to keep huge chunks of it interesting. So if you were worried about The King & I being a poor excuse for Faith to cash in on her late husband, you can worry less now: this is no reason for Biggie to roll in his grave.

-Max

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I’ve written a bit about The Notorious B.I.G. in the past. You can see some of the words I selected here.