Claim: At a Bad Boy photo shoot, Faith Evans met The Notorious B.I.G..

Faith Renée Evans -LRB- born June 10 , 1973 -RRB- is an American singer-songwriter . Born in Florida and raised in New Jersey , Evans relocated to Los Angeles in 1993 for a career in the music business . After working as a backing vocalist for Al B. Sure and Christopher Williams , she became the first female artist to contract with Sean `` Puff Daddy '' Combs ' Bad Boy Entertainment recording company in 1994 , for which she collaborated with several label mates such as Mary J. Blige and Carl Thomas and released three platinum-certified studio albums between 1995 and 2001 , including Faith -LRB- 1995 -RRB- , Keep the Faith -LRB- 1998 -RRB- and Faithfully -LRB- 2001 -RRB- .   In 2003 , she ended her relationship with the company to sign with Capitol Records . Her first album released on the label , The First Lady -LRB- 2005 -RRB- became her highest-charting album at the time , reaching the top of the US Top R&B / Hip-Hop Albums charts , while the holiday album A Faithful Christmas , released the same year , would become her last release before the company was bought in 2007 . Following a longer hiatus , Evans released her fifth album Something About Faith on the independent label Prolific/E1 Music in 2010 .   Other than her recording career , Evans is mostly known as the widow of New York rapper Christopher `` The Notorious B.I.G. '' Wallace , whom she married on August 4 , 1994 , a few weeks after meeting at a Bad Boy photo shoot . The turbulent marriage resulted in Evans ' involvement in the East Coast -- West Coast hip hop rivalry , dominating the rap music news at the time , and ended with Wallace 's murder in an unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles on March 9 , 1997 . A 1997 tribute single featuring Puff Daddy and the band 112 , named `` I 'll Be Missing You '' , won Evans a Grammy Award in 1998 . Also an actress and writer , Evans made her screen debut in the 2000 musical drama Turn It Up by Robert Adetuyi . Her autobiography Keep the Faith : A Memoir was released by Grand Central Publishing in 2008 and won a 2009 African American Literary Award for the Best Biography/Memoir category .