Faith Evans

My childhood was limited to mostly gospel music. We didn't have, like, a lot of records in our house, you know. It was like my grandparents who raised me. They were pretty old-fashioned in their religious ways, so it was like church, church, church, school, school, school.

When I first met Big, we were both at a 'Bad Boy' family photo shoot. I was kind of familiar with the name Biggie Smalls, but I really wasn't that much into hip-hop at the time, so I really didn't know that was him. He said he didn't even know I was an artist on 'Bad Boy.'

A lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often - I say this against myself - a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light.