Bittersweet Infamy - #92 - No Other Love

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

Bittersweet Romance! Taylor tells Josie about the turbulent marriage between R&B icon Faith Evans and rap legend The Notorious B.I.G., and the East Coast vs. West Coast hip-hop feud that ended in two of music's most infamous assassinations. Plus: meet the Egyptologist influencer couple whose controversial cosplay is making waves up and down the Nile River.

Welcome to Bitter Sweet Info. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and in the feed. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Josie, do you have any memorable Valentine's that you've given or received? Oh, ho ho. Yeah, that's where we're going with the banter today. Memorable Valentine's. My high school did do this thing where you could buy carnations and the student body

would like, you know, the student body association organized it so they would deliver the carnations to whomever wanted with a little note. Yes. We had candy grams, but it was the same thing. It was so rough because you'd get into advisory in the morning and it'd be like, well, who has the most carnations? Who's the most popular? That is how it is.

That is how it is. And then also like, you have to go through like, if you were someone who didn't get said item, you have to go through that like, painful self-examination of like, am I not worthy of a carnation? Am I so ugly that no one will give me a carnation? I knew I shouldn't have gotten braces.

My mom told me that the braids would be cute when I got them in Cozumel. But now I'm back here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and my scalp itches. Like there's all of these things that happen. It's sad. Yeah, it's hard to grow up. And I feel like in elementary school it was like if you bring a Valentine, you have to bring one for everybody. But by the time you get to high school it's like, na-da, we're throwing you all into the deep end and like, you know, you're gonna get three and the girl sitting next

to you is gonna get 30. It's gonna be rough, yeah. You know who I would not like to receive a Valentine from is the subjects of our most recent episode of The Bitter Sweet Film Club. The honeymoon killers. The honeymoon killers, the 1970 true crime movie that was based on the real life murders of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck. They were a couple who would seduce lonely women through a male in Lonely Hearts club ad back in the post-war era. And it's just kind of this grimy story story of these people and their victims and it really Divided the room critically. We taped it last night. We couldn't come we didn't come to a consensus, but a very amicable

non-consensus. Yes, yes, they are serial killers. They kill many women and we sure see it and It's apparently a polarizing piece of film and we'd love to talk all about it with you over at coffee.com ko-fi.com slash bittersweet and for me become a subscriber and you can access the bittersweet film club What have you brought for me since we're doing bittersweet romance which for those of you who are uninitiated we are doing our month-long celebration of romance, bittersweet romance every Sunday, a new episode. What have you brought as your romantic subject

for this week's Minfamous? And this small story to start us off, to warm us up, foreplay joke. Just the sampler, please. I don't want to get the, oh no, sorry. I was making a box ofplay joke. Just the sampler please. I don't want to get the... Oh no, sorry, I was making a box of chocolates joke, but I really don't want to cut off your four-play joke. There's nothing worse than frustrated four-play, right? You want to see that shit through to completion, so please, go ahead. Just to touch a four-play, this narrative.

A touch. To get us warmed up for the main event. Oh baby. Get us warmed up for the main event. Oh baby. Astuff. Cut those fingernails. Let's go. Oh dear. Oh dear. Let me just go and buff around those. Okay, let's go. We are on menace. My big sister Josie, everyone. So I bring you the story of love, of two, two lovers, two academics, two Egyptologists in love. Oh wow. Two Egyptologists in love. Yeah, Doug. Okay. I'm gonna introduce you to Colleen Manassa Darnell.

Okay. She taught at Yale University as assistant professor of Egyptology. She was then promoted to associate professor of Egyptology. Did she make it to professor Josie, I gotta know. Well, I'll let you know, she currently teaches art history at a community college in Waterbury, Connecticut. So...

What happened? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What happened? What did you do, Colleen? What happened? Her research interests include Egyptian funerary religion, especially the corpus of Netherworld books, New Kingdom literary texts, military history, History, and the Archaeology of the Third

Nome of Upper Egypt. So those who have watched the documentary The Mummy Staring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss know that the thing that you don't want to be messing around with is this, but you must not read from the book! Like it's very important to not fuck around with these books at the bed. I don't know what Colleen is thinking. Oh, Colleen fucking translated that motherfucker, so. And I'm also going to introduce you to her husband, John Coleman Darnell, Professor of Egyptology at Yale University. I don't know if you've

heard of it. Couple of Yalees. Editor-in-chief of Yale Egyptological Studies, Curator of the Anthropology at the Yale Peabody Museum, and director of the Elkab Desert Survey Project. And his research interests include Egyptian religion, cryptography, the scripts and texts of Greco-Roman Egypt, and the Egyptian Western desert. He has numerous books to his name. I love cryptocurrency and Greco-Roman wrestling. The pair have written many articles together and many books. The pair met when Colleen was an undergraduate student at Yale and our boy John was her professor, bum, bum, bum, which, you know. Wouldn't surprise me if it's not technically

against the rules as much as it may raise eyebrows. Yes, exactly, yeah. But the thing is, is Colleen not only did her undergraduate work at Yale, she also did her graduate and her PhD work at Yale with John. That could be a lot. And when she graduated, she was then hired on as an assistant professor at Yale, which I mentioned in her bio earlier. So she then became a colleague, which sounds great. But there were concerns within the department, some complaints raised by fellow

students and colleagues that the relationship and it was an illicit relationship because John was previously married and at the time was married. That's a pretty classic story too. Oh no, it's a classic love story, y'all'all classic classic academic love story that you've seen a million times if you've been to a university. Yes. Yes. Yes. Some complaints were raised during that time and there was a review board. John was put on suspension from his position as the chair of the department of Egyptology, which kind of put things into a bit of a tailspin considering the chair is kind of the head of the department and does all the work. And eventually in 2015, after 15 years of being in a relationship, Colleen stepped away from Yale and no longer

taught there. Okay. Uh-huh. I mean, 15 years in feels like a bit late. We could say that that door closed for Colleen. Her and John, they did get married. Colleen has gone on to a different type of Egyptologist career. If you could please describe what you see in this. It's a real. You'll be seeing a real. I would say

that I'm looking at a beautiful white woman in 1920s drag. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe 30s. She is wearing a long pink frock and a pink hat. Her hair and makeup looks exactly like Amelie. She is wearing white gloves. She is holding a white parasol and she is traipsing about various ancient Egyptian monuments. The effect is like very death on the Nile, I would say. Very Agatha Christie, death on the Nile. She gets on a boat at one point. She's like hanging out with a dude with a walking stick and spat. She's got like a Catherine Zeta-Jones Chicago haircut. Yeah, there we go. And there's some honking gramophone music playing behind it, and she really seems to love in life. Yeah. Oh, there's also a long caption about her visit to this particular temple, and it's kind of long-winded and dry. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd say,

yeah, I think the 1920s drag is a really good way to depict it because it is kind of impeccable. It's not a nod, it's not like a mood. It looks like an incredibly good costume. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, some cosplay perhaps. Very good, very well done, very well done. She looks great, she looks fantastic. If the vibe that she's trying to hit is egg of the Christie death on the Nile, fucking slammed her shut.

Yeah. Like let's really throw her back to like the good old days of British colonialism here and get on a boat down denial, right? That's what I picked. Yeah. So you have just seen Colleen Darnell and her husband, the man in spats, John Darnell, on a extremely popular Instagram account called Vintage Egyptologist, which has over 240,000 followers. So like thief.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. British Colonials. Thief of culture and legitimate artifacts and treasures. Go back to episode, we talked all about kind of the colonial imprint on Egyptology back in the, like Egyptology as a category, right?

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how it's kind of a problematic aesthetic to begin with. And if you're bringing it into a modern context without really examining that deeply colonial, deeply extractive, deeply white supremacist view that it could potentially be an issue. This was started just a few years back by Colleen and John. It's a joint project and they view it as an opportunity to share antiquity, to share lessons of Egyptology with a wider non-academic audience, you know, like a public service.

I hope those are your words, Josie. I hope those are your words, Josie. There is quite a bit of, I would call, self-inflation on their part when it does come to this. I can't believe that these people are self-absorbed. Shuck, I quite. And I'm not trying to be like, you know, fucking pile on the fucking TikTok or whoever internet of the whatever. So it goes, I do think that it's really interesting that two people who

have gone, perhaps this is my perception, which again I should know better having gone to university, but you would think that someone who's really made their bread and butter Egyptology and has really like risen to this steak and granted pretty white ivory tower academia in Yale, but like you'd think they would know

better is kind of what I'm thinking. It comes off very like, it comes off very clueless white people. Yeah. I'll quote John when he's talking about the Instagram account and he says, it's a way to catalog our vintage pieces because they love to collect vintage items, share photos and talk about Egyptology at the same time.

These people have stolen a mummy. It is widely popular compared to other accredited and educated Egyptologists. It's how we intake information now in these like very hypercurated social media niblets, be it Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, etc. Yeah, and I think that's a good point that like it is just kind of the way that we communicate. It's a much more visual sense and a much more like sound-bitey. Shorter. Shorter.

But also more artificial. The realities that this woman presents aren't real. Exactly. And that's something very interesting for a historian to want to propagate. It seems kind of incongruent, might be the best way to say it. Yeah, but also you know as well as I do that academia is a might as well be called macadamia because it's full of nuts. Well, and she kind of got the boot a little bit. Not even a not even a chuckle for that one. Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Well, you know, I just I don't want it.

I don't want it. I don't want it. I want to earn it. But yeah, she did she did kind of get the the the nudge out and she like, I don't know what I call fair. I don't know what my lines kind of are in this story. I don't really know whether I object to what she's doing here. I don't know if she should have been fired. Like I don't know. Yeah. Oh very murky. Yeah. Well to be fair I don't think she was fired. I think she stepped down. She stepped away. Yes fair yes that's a good clarification. But there was a 2020 article in hyperallergic which was written by three other female academic Egyptologists. And they talk about how not only Colleen, because it's not only Colleen's project, it's John's as well.

They comment on the fact that she's cosplaying this era that was extractive, colonial, orientalist and kind of guising it as, well, this is also a part of history. This is also a part of Egypt's history. By putting the two things together, she's implicitly equating them kind of thing. Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can hear that argument for sure.

They make a really good point when they say that many academics, and this is a quote from the article, many academics suggest that what matters is the content, not the container, which feels like a very kind of scholarly stance to take. So criticism of this type amounts to nothing more than uncollegial gossiping. So it's kind of like like who cares as long as the information is correct and cited. You know, like yes and no. It's hard with these things where like, I guess the harms that they cause are kind of indirect. So if you name them, then it's easy to make you

look alarmist because you can be like, well, you can like say that this is harmful, but who does it really harm? And then you're you're like well the drip drip drip of these weird Glamorizations of a colonial era can collectively do harm even if this individual instance of it is just like Some lady in a very fly pink dress dancing around some ruins like Emily Yeah, and they also go on to point out that they're kind of cherry picking the history. They're not actually engaging with the full context of the 1920s or of, you know, this era of the 1910s and 1920s. No, it's a very idealized white person's version of what Egyptology was about and meant and it ignores, like, the fact that the Egyptian guards were mistreated even though this was their land and their artifacts sort of by birthright,

you know, these sorts of things. Yeah, Egypt was about the white people who discovered Egypt and not the Egyptians who actually built and created and maintained. Lived there for thousands of years, yeah. And there's a quote from this hyper allergic article, quote, in the 1920s, Egypt was ruled by the British during that time There was an acceleration of European archaeological missions in the country and also a rise of

international tourism the period of British rule over Egypt Which vintage Egyptologists the Instagram account celebrates as the golden age of fashion of Egyptology of travel and it was also a period of pervasive colonial violence. Back in the USA, the aftermath of World War I had led to the Great Migration and ongoing racial segregation and violence toward black Americans fueled by the new quote, new Negro movement. Unsurprisingly, vintage Egyptologist does not engage with this type of quote

vintage, but promotes instead a sugar-coated, romantic, orientalist image of that period." Yeah? Yeah. No, that's true. I agree with that. I would look at her and be like, something's a little bit, I don't trust this. I don't, I think you have a mummy hand. I think you have a mummy hand. I think you have a mummy hand. But I don't know these people personally. I don't know these people personally, and they may just be like a lovely couple that is maybe like slightly misguided

and surprisingly unaware of their privilege. I say surprising, because in my head, Egyptologists are like quite culturally aware, but perhaps it's the opposite. But I think that's kind of it too is like obviously like all those videos most of them are in ruins and in sites that are in Egypt. So if you're traveling there and you're a highly educated person both of them have PhDs you would think that there might be some have PhDs, you would think that there might be some awareness of the... Some workshop that they might have been mandated to take. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

At some point, Yale. Some DEI training, I don't know. Yeah. Where's your cultural safety program, Yale? Yeah. What's going on? I thought universities were supposed to be these like leftist woke Avans. What the fuck happened?

Exactly! Yeah, yeah. Converting all of our children into socialists. No. We convert them into fucking Lady Mary from Downton Abbey and they post about it on Instagram. That's what happens now. Ugh. Music

So your girl, uh, Joni Mitchell turned up at the Grammys, huh? She was just doing a- she did both sides now. Both of them? Both sides now, yeah. She left the shoe polish at home, no Art Nouveau appearance. Thank God. She's probably for the best.

Yeah. I knew that Tracy Chapman was there, but I didn't know that, uh, Joni was. I love Tracy Chapman. I'm so glad she's back. I was- I've been not worried, because I knew she would be okay, but like, I haven't seen her in a while, and I'm glad she's back. I've been not worried because I knew she would be okay, but like I haven't seen her in a while and I'm glad she's having a moment because fast car is a fucking banger. And then also Annie Lennox saying nothing compares to you during the in-memoriam segment. She used the Shanaid O'Connor segment to make a message about a

ceasefire in Palestine. Nice. Shanaid would have- Shanaid would be all about that. Shanaid woulda dug that. So very cool. Important message and like a cool way to do it. I say these things perhaps to put you- Update me on the Grammys. Well it's important that I update you on the Grammys because I want to put you in the mind of the music industry for today's story. Okay. Today I will be telling you the story of the tempestuous marriage between two rising musical stars who would become certified icons. Certified. This, Josie, was a union riddled with deceit, affairs, and violence set against the backdrop of a bicoastal industry-wide feud that started with petty insults in music magazines and on radio airwaves,

and ended with two of the most infamous assassinations in music history. Are you talking about Tupac and Biggie? Well, they weren't very- This is the story of the romantic relationship between the first lady of R&B, Faith Evans, and rap legend Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka the notorious B.I.G. Okay. Yeah, I know. So to your point, no Biggie and Tupac were not married to each other. Not that we know of.

Not that we know of. Not that we know of. So yeah, what do you know about this? I know West Coast is the best coast. That's true. You know, I don't know the specifics, but I know that like it was a rivalry that got kind of hyped by the music industry and it got, I would say exploited by the music industry in order to kind of up this very notorious and infamous, I guess, connotation with rap, especially because it was, I don't, I can't even tell you the date, but it was the 90s. The action of the story takes place from largely from 93 to 1997. So yeah, we're kind of

at this height and there's a lot of maybe in a broader national sense, like moral panic around rap that it's just like- Yeah, gangster rap and corrupting the youth and it's misogynistic, which there's a conversation to be had about misogyny and rap for sure, but it was very like, it was often like a quite coded conversation, etc. Right, yeah. And then do you know anything about Faith Evans and her and Biggie? I don't know anything that named Faith Evans is actually brand new to me.

Okay, perfect. Let me give you- Shower me. Haven't you got it yet? I need a- Half a dozen warnings. Oh, oh, warnings. Okay.

Okay. Half a dozen caveats here. Okay. Half a dozen asterisks. Half a dozen prefaces. Here they are. I'm gonna just blow through them. Number one. Okay. Abundant violence including sexual and domestic violence throughout. Okay, thank you. Number two, I'm not black

and I'm conscious that historically depictions of say the rap industry is filtered through a white lens can be pretty hidden myths in terms of their sensitivity. I always try to bring an abundance of respect, empathy and honesty toward the nuance, triumphs and flaws of all the subjects in any story I cover. I hope that comes through in today's story however imperfect. Tight? Number three. One way that I found to empathize with the people in this story is that they're all really young like holy shit these are babies. Okay. Biggie is 24 when he gets killed. No. Right? Because when I saw him I was a little kid and he seemed like the biggest man so I was like

he must be like 40. He's so big. He's, he's biggie. Yeah. But he's small. He's only 24. I get it. It's the dichotomy. Yeah. Yeah.

It's the duality of men. Two pockets, 25. Faith Evans will be between the ages of 19 and 23 for the vast majority of this story. Gosh. So when you see absolutely everyone in this story behaving immaturely, it may perhaps help to remember that these folks are dealing with enormous fame and lots of people in their ear at an age where they're still coming into an understanding of the world and recovering from their own young traumas and so forth.

Totally. And they're also babies. And they're also little babies. Notorious BAB. Why? Why? Good question. Number four, I am by no means an expert on the rich tapestry that is the history of rap, hip-hop, and R&B music. Even when we come in close on something like the East Coast, West Coast, Beef of the 90s, the drama and cast of characters are Shakespearean in their intricacy. There are literally dozens of important figures involved, many of whom I've given relatively minor edits in this story even though they remain well-known celebrities.

Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blyde, Usher, Jay-Z, Dr. J, Cut-Em-All. They're all like, they're all characters in this, they all had to go for this telling, just to keep it tight. So it will probably be helpful now to clarify my focus. I am specifically interested today in the story of the romantic relationship between Faith Evans and the notorious B.I.G. how it becomes entangled in the feud between Death Row Records in Los Angeles and Bad Boy Records in New York, and how those events culminate in the murders of both Tupac Shakur and the notorious B.I.G. That's the focus. Okay, okay. Number five, this is a story with many sides and many unreliable narrators, so I tried to get as even a spread

of sources as I could in depicting this very infamous and contentious relationship between Death Row and Bad Boy Records. I would say if there's any bias in this telling, it's probably towards the perspective of Faith Evans because she's the half of the central couple that lived to write a memoir I could read, and so she becomes something like our protagonist. Okay, that, yeah, yeah, okay. Just know that this is a story that's really entrenched in a lot of different opinions, miscommunications, gossip, exaggeration, misinformation, conspiracy, etc, etc, so please don't take any of the information communicated here as the absolute gospel. And number six, I apologize in advance because I will at least once refer to Faith Evans as Faith Hill.

Oh shit, okay. Just because they're similar names and they're both musicians, but they're very different women. So if I ever say Faith Hill in this, please know that I mean Faith Evans. Faith Evans is born in Lakeland, Florida, June 10th, 1973 to Helen Evans, a singer and a musician named Richard Swain, who seemingly ghosts before Faith is born, and whom I don't believe she's ever met. Helen is only 19, so she leaves Faith with Faith's grandparents, Helen's parents, Bob and Mae, and her aunt Peewee in Newark, New Jersey, which is where Faith grows up. For context, Newark, the brick city, has, at this point, a recent history of tension between

a growing black population and a prejudiced white political establishment. That tension reaches a flashpoint after a 1967 incident of brutality by two white police officers against a black taxi driver, John William Smith. This leads to a series of riots that end in 26 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and nearly 1,500 arrests. At this point, Newark is rapidly abandoned by the white population, followed by a decline in economy, resources, safety, all those things that come with white flight. White flight, I was just about to say, yeah. Yeah, this is like, I think a textbook kind of, when people are talking about white flight,

Newark after the race riots kind of thing. Yeah. In the 1980s, Krapp Cocaine takes hold, which introduces addiction to the equation, and then the war on drugs elevates the rate of incarceration, which further polarizes the community from the police. This type of environment has everything to do with the kind of crime you hear about in the lyrics of say, Tupac or the notorious B.I.G. And it's the environment we find faith growing

up in while Bob and May attempt to keep her safe Right, and Aunt Pee-Wee. And it got, can't forget Aunt Pee-Wee. A mench. And not just her, Bob and May and Pee-Wee as well seem to have been very charitable Christian souls who fostered over 200 kids during faith's time living there. Which is admirable but always very busy, always very complicated as all of these different children and teens with all of their different circumstances pour in and out of the house and meet and unmute each other, right? Because of all of this chaos, Bob and Mae ran a tight ship and Faith has a very sheltered

upbringing, very ensconced in the local Emmanuel Baptist Church, which is where she nurtures her gift of singing. Faith is a young romantic who loves to jump into relationships with both feet, and her sheltered environment by her own admission leads her to have a taste for bad boys, and these two qualities combined will really create a lot of disaster for her in the big picture this story. She dates a guy who physically abuses her, she has a thing with a married man, which she later says will manifest as her karma when Biggie cheats on her with anything that moves. She has a lot of very dramatic toxic relationships that really set a baseline of jealousy and possessiveness which will become a mutual quality in her romance with Big.

Yeah okay. Faith gets into Fordham University and it's... Not a good fit. She's putting in the motions but she's not really into it. Yeah it's not a good fit. She's putting in the motions, but she's not really into it. Yeah, it's not a good fit. She's still living with Bob and Mae and Pee Wee in New York and commuting to Fordham. The classes aren't speaking to her. And around this time, she runs into a dude she knows through church named Keama Griffin, aka Key.

Okay. He's a musician too, so they have that in common, and they will soon have more than that in common, faith gets pregnant. Haha, yes! That's a good way to put that. Yes. We have a little bit more in common now. We've got someone in common now. Yes. And she calls up, he and she says I'm pregnant but like don't worry, I'll take care of it, I'll get an abortion, whatever. But he convinces her not to. He says, I'm gonna move to LA to try to get this musical group I'm working on off the ground. Come with me, have this child, and let's do this together. Oh wow. Faith, who isn't all that enchanted with her life

and loves to dive in with both feet, says, okay, she leaves Fordham and follows Key to the West Coast. Unfortunately, it goes off the rails with Key pretty quickly in LA. Faith describes a scenario where a very beautiful woman comes to the door and is like, oh, you must be the vocal coach. So Key's keeping company with pretty ladies and not explaining who his new pregnant wife-to-be is. The relationship between the two of them is instantly riddled with affairs and jealousy, and soon Faith is a single mother to their daughter, China. In order to support herself, Faith is working as a demo and backup singer for Albee Shur, and it's through this

connection that she finds herself getting invited to sing in front of a hungry, up-and-coming, record executive named Sean Combs. Do you know who that is? Yeah, Puff Daddy, Pee Diddy. Or? Uh, what's another one? There's a few, there's a few more we'll take here. Sean Puffy Combs, Pee Diddy, Puff Daddy. Puffy, we'll take Puffy. Puffy. We're also looking for Diddy.

Oh, just Plain Old Diddy, okay, okay. Just Plain Old Diddy, also take Sean John. Sean John. As in the clothing. Oh, oh right. So we've got a few options here. Okay, okay. Whatever you want to call him, just don't call him late for court when it comes to the various sexual assault lawsuits that were filed against him in 2023. Yeah, that's right, yeah. The gloss on Puffy at this point is that he's the talent director at Uptown Records.

Okay. He was really instrumental in working on Mary J. Blyge's like beloved first album. What's the 411? Okay, he was part of packaging her He's got a real eye for taking a raw ingredient and packaging it into something really hot and marketable Yeah, and Mary J. Blyge is fucking rad. Oh, yeah that heard like Intra into I don't know the industry, I don't know, the industry. Like, I don't know, she always, I always think that she's really cool because she doesn't quite fit in a lot of categories.

Missy Elliot too. And I just like, they're so cool. They're so fucking rad. Yeah, so to find space for them, that's like, that is quite the feat. That is quite the feather in your cap. Mary J is, as you say, seen as this like breakout talent who combines like this from hip hop and this from R&B and this from rap and like puts it together in like a really appealing package and that package is somewhat masterminded by Sean Combs.

He's also kind of notorious for at this point wanting to be a part of the show himself. So as he brings on these various artists and as he goes on as he will to start Bad Boy Records, he will give himself little featured verses, he'll appear in the music videos, and you get the sense that Lucy wants to be part of the show. He's a shark, he's like an executive, he also wants to be a musician, he's temperamental, he's a bit of a tyrant, he's Sean Puffy Combs and he's like our tertiary antagonist. T-t-tight. In any case, very impressed by Faith's performance, he tries to sign her on the spot to his new label Bad Boy.

Faith says, let me run that contract by my lawyer. Smart girl. Ooh, very smart. She does, she signs, she takes it to the lawyer, tees, knives, or crowded in dots, not fixing it. And at age 20, Faith has her first major record deal. Puffy with his key knife for packaging rebrands her as quote, my mature balladier for the grown and sexy folks. Okay. Favouring elegant styles and romantic slow jams. Okay, so definitely R&B. Leaning hard R&B. Okay. You hear her described a lot as the first lady of R&B and the first lady moniker I think comes from being Big Papa's wife. Notorious B.I.G. is also

Big Papa. So she's like the first lady of Bad Boy or the first lady of R&B. I see, yeah. And it's sort of like a mixed blessing because it's like, I see, yeah. And it's sort of like a mixed blessing because it's like, it's a great hook but also it sort of like positions her relative to a man, right? Right, yeah, yeah, why not just queen of R&B and let it go, but yeah. As much as her brand now is romantic, Slow Jam's Faith as we know never won to take it slow in romance and so it is when at a promotional photo shoot for the simmering young Talon at the simmering young label that is Bad Boy, Faith meets a guy named Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, which he later, apparently someone else kind of already had the name Biggie Smalls,

so that's when he switches to the notorious B.I.G. But for today he's the infamous B.I.G. for Arpys. Oh, thank you, yay! Faith calls him Big, so we will too. Let's just call him Big. Big is a similar age to Faith, and he's currently the next big thing in rap after a well-received feature on the remix

of Mary J. Blyja's song, Real Love. He's the centerpiece of Puffy's new record label, and there are big expectations for his debut album. How do you get to be the first lady, right? You're married to the president. Yeah, okay. Faith and Biggie bond on having kids. Biggie has a young daughter named Tiana.

Okay. Faith enjoys the interaction and is instantly drawn in by what I'll describe as Biggie's Tony Soprano Riz. He's not an oil painting in the conventional sense, but there's a confidence that endears and compels. Okay. That's the vibe. A James Gandolfini-esque charm about him, perhaps.

Okay, okay. He's a little rougher in the edges, but the roughness is... A necessary roughness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. There's a moment that Faith describes when he's like leaning back and kind of like making sweet eyes at her, but he has a lazy eye, so he's kind of only making like one sweet eye at her, and the other one's kind of, you know? Love it. That's hot. That's bittersweet romance. She tells about when she's about to leave the set to go back to New Jersey

and Biggie comes out. He's like, faith, faith, and he walks over and he's wearing like his three s, three XL pants. So he's walking really slow and he has to like stop halfway to like pull his pants back up and hike him up. She's just watching all this play out. And so he's like, can you give me a ride back to Brooklyn? She's like, sure. He's like, can you bring my friends back to Brooklyn too? And he points to his like group of underage teenage friends that he brings everywhere. Okay, yeah. And so they all go back. This group, by the way, is called the, like broadly, they're the junior mafia and they're like his childhood friends whom he in a nice way ends up like kind of nepotisming into the music industry as an act.

Entourage, entourage is that. Yeah, sure. We have a lot of HBO series references to. From there, Faith and Biggie spend every day together. Faith instantly ingratiates herself with Biggie's group of friends and starts spending whole days hanging around with him in Brooklyn, a barrow that Faith says Biggie loves like a wife. He grew up there making music and being involved in street-level drug crime, although by the time we find him in this story I think he

might just be smoking weed and playing Sega with the junior mafia. I should also use this opportunity to introduce two of the stories, secondary antagonists who will be significant obstacles for our Romeo and Juliet going forward. The first is the best known and lone female member of the Junior Mafia, Little Kim. A Brooklyn rapper, yeah a name you might recognize, still famous this day, a Brooklyn rapper whom Biggie famously discovered freestyling on the street when she was a teenager. Well, I struggled with whether to tell you the next part now or save it for a big reveal, but I decided that sometimes we as listeners get to know things that the characters in the story

don't, and sadly in real life this seemed to be something everyone knew but faith. Lil' Kim was fucking Biggie before, during, and after the rise and fall of his marriage to Faith Evans. Oh... The broad implication in the various sources I consumed, whether or not this is the case or just a piece of like media spin as so much around the story is, I can't say, but the broad implication is that Kim was in love with Biggie and took his marriage to Faith pretty hard, and he knew how she felt, but just kind of strung her along as part of the roster.

Ooh. Either way, Kim will be a persistent thorn in Faith's side going forward, but for now to quote Faith, my little Kim bullshit detector was set to off. In fact, Faith is downright friendly with Kim, taking her own shopping trips and showing her how to work out at the gym at Biggie's request. Oh, Biggie. Oh, Big, don't do it. As for our other secondary antagonist among Biggie's non-Brooklyn friends is a rapper

named Tupac Shakur. Hello. The child of Black Panthers and a consummate art student who grew up between NYC, Baltimore and Marin City, California. Tupac is newly on the national map after his 1991 debut album, Tupacalypse Now, good title, was cited by the defense attorney of 32 year old Houstonian Ray Ronald Howard as his inspiration for murdering Texas Highway Patrol trooper Bill Davidson in 1992. Art is powerful, dude. Art is powerful.

That's what I hear. This led to criticism of the album from then VP Dan Quayle, who is no Tim Kaine. At this point in the story, Biggie and Pock are very chummy. The type of dudes who sleep on each other's couches and have meals together, that will eventually change dramatically, but for now it's all love. Okay. And it's all love for Faith and Biggie, who become more and more smitten until they finally kiss. She describes the kiss as, passionate, but thoughtful. Oh, cute.

I liked that detail. I was like, no, this is bittersweet romance. I want to know about the kiss. Uh-huh. Give me the dates. They make love, and it truly is making love and then it's poppy love. Okay. Until they finally- Is that bubbles popping? What is that? No, that was um, that was hearts popping. Oh, hearts, okay, okay. I can't hear it through the zoom.

It'll sound good on the playback, don't worry. Biggie and Faith being young people in love decide to elope. So they've eloped now but Faith still needs to move to Brooklyn. They still haven't told some pretty important people that they were dating Including little Kim. Oh shit. Oh shit Sean Combs. Okay, big boss and Biggie's Jamaican immigrant mother Ms. Valetta Wallace. Oh, you gotta tell your mom Well, Biggie apparently faith really wanted to and Biggie kept being biggies I get the vibe no disrespect to the late great notorious B.I.G.

I get the vibe he was a bit of a man child and he just kind of couldn't get up the jam to tell his mother because he was doing something naughty, you know? Okay, okay, yeah. But apparently Faith is able to kind of instantly explain herself and she has broadly a pretty cordial relationship with Ms. Wallace going forward. Okay, well that's good for her. So yeah, they've left a lot of beds unmade on their way to the altar here. They're, they basically roll up in like a white linen dress. He's in his Tim's. They're smoking weed the

whole way up. They've been a witness. There is a prodigious amount of weed smoked in this story that I didn't include, but I want you to know that finally there's a fucking decent amount of marijuana consumption in a bittersweet infamy story. It only took us 92 episodes. I mean, there's plenty in the telling, but in the actual... Oh yeah, it's steeped in it, drenched in it. Oh good. Bong resin, but seldom in the actual text. But they're young, they're in love, and now they're married,

and unfortunately, the honeymoon doesn't last too long. Biggie's first album, Ready to Die, is an instant smash, meaning lots of touring, lots of fame, and lots of attention coming really fast to a young guy who doesn't even dress himself or pack his own bags at this point. Yeah. Well, it sounds like if he was a bit of a mama's boy, that may not have been the case even before fame, too. Oh, no, it went from velet of faith.

You just know. He's specifically touring with Junior Mafia which means he's either partying and fucking chicks with his like teenage boy chums or he's fucking little Kim. Right. Yeah. Whenever Faith visits Biggie on tour, Kim makes herself scarce. Quote, when Big and I were together, she played her position in the back, way back. But Faith self identifies as quote, a super sleuth when it comes to infidelity, which bears itself out a few times in our story today. And so naturally, Biggie's various other women start to bubble up like the impurities in a piece of gold. So as I want to know, not that these women are impurities, they're

just people. We're all just people. But I can't resist a good metaphor. Basically, like someone calls the house and in order to get back to that person, Faith hits the redial and in order to find out what this person's telephone number is, she listens to... Star 69. Yeah, Star 69 back in the day. It was a different era. We also had like 10, 10, 220. We had a few. Yeah. And then in Spanish at 10, 10, 10, 4, 5, listen to the music. Oh, cute. 10, 10, 3, 4, 5 listen to the music. That's nice. So she hears the

It redials the number so she can hear the dial pad noises in her ear and you know how they're all slightly different. Someone with a really keen ear could probably discern what the number was just by hearing the do-do-doots. So this is what Faith apparently does. She talks to this lady, this lady's like yeah I fucked big when he was on tour and now I'm pregnant with his kid. She says what she says. Something probably not very nice, hangs up the phone. Big comes in, she confronts Big, and apparently he just fesses right up to him. He's like, yeah, kinda doesn't seem to get why she's tripping at all. And she never hears anything from or about this woman or this supposed pregnancy again, and it just sort of becomes a known part of their relationship that Biggie cheats frequently.

Aw, yeah, it's just wallpaper. Yeah. But not wallpaper. It's very uneasily the status quo. Okay, okay. Perhaps the most notable incident comes when Faith catches Big cheating on her after one of his shows in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and so he calls her on the phone and he basically says like, don't call my room tonight because I'm not like... I won't be alone. Well, what he says is one of the guys in the Junior

Mafia basically is going to be using it or somebody or like one of the roadies or something. And she's like, does he like, does he think I was fucking born yesterday? What is this? She knows he's in Virginia Beach, Virginia. So she purchases a plane ticket. Before she flies down, she goes to a song recording for her first album, and she sings this like really bluesy song called No Other Love that's like about her like intense obsessive-passionate relationship with Biggie. Woah. And then she gets on the plane to Virginia, she gets down to his hotel, she's sneaking past the columns because all his his

posse is in the lobby right? So she's doing this like hitman style right? Sneaking behind bushes and fucking hopping onto the bell hops cart you know whatever. Stealth mode turtleneck go. Exactly. Dodges all the personnel, she gets up to the door, knock knock knock, who is it? Housekeeping. Oh shit. Puts her finger over the pee pole in case whoever it is looks out. She says I was ready in my stance to attack like Power Rangers. A woman opens the door and

Faith goes for it and she beats this woman's ass. She really lays the fist to her. And Biggie's sitting there on the bed, his like, kinda slow talking, very like, plass itself and he's like, why are you doing that? I didn't even fuck her. And Faith says, you should have. And fucking continues to beat on her. And then she fucking storms out. In the end, Biggie follows her back to NYC on the next flight to beg for her forgiveness and she just can't stay mad about that big ol' baby face so she takes him back.

Oh no. Don't do it. Yeah. Romance is a... it's a complicated thing. It's bittersweet. It's very bittersweet. This becomes the story of their marriage. Yeah. Faith finding women's phone numbers on strange polaroids in the glove compartment, or leaving Puffy's sons christening early to hunt down Biggie's mistresses at their home address. Oh shit. Wow. And their ass, yeah.

There's a lot of faith. Faith Evans beats a lot of ass in this story. It's kind of a recurring motif. That's kind of rad, but horrible at the same time. I mean, I mean. They're sweet. Hugs not fists. Don't try this at home.

Yeah. Similarly, Biggie will go after and beat up guys that he perceives her into faith. Although at this point, she's much more serious about the monogamy of their marriage than he is. So he never actually, like, she's not actually sleeping around on him. He's just jealous and possessive even though he cheats on her constantly. Right, yeah. Yeah. And is like conducting an ongoing affair with little Kim that he

hasn't told her about. Yeah, yeah. It's not just like one nightstand. I'm in this I'm in the city for 25 hours and so blah, but oh, rough. Says a much more reflective faith, quote, I would eventually learn that beating the chicks ass doesn't work. There will always be someone to take her place. If your man is gonna cheat on you, it's up to him to put a stop to it.

I'm remembering she's very young. She was very young. She's like 20 here. She's like 20 years old here. She's like 20 years old here. It has been in a bunch of abusive relationships, you know. But at the time, she's she's really into the drama of it all, going so far as to get Biggs name tattooed on her breast. And then eventually when that goes south, she gets it changed into Big Faye.

So it's kind of self-sacrificing. Oh, okay, okay. All that fighting and fucking makes its way onto Faith's debut album, Faith, which becomes a platinum selling R&B classic. Faith becomes an instant celebrity performing and making promotional appearances of her own, so now her and Big E are ships in the night. They love spending time together with their daughters in their Brooklyn apartment when they occur, but they're few and far between. It's during one of these hangouts that Faith finds out that Biggie's a bit confused over something that he's kind of reading in the magazines.

Apparently Tupac is making some pretty serious accusations about him in interviews. What this is about is in 1994 at Quad Studios, Biggie was there doing a recording session with Junior Mafia, they run into Tupac there, and shortly after they have an encounter, bang bang bang bang bang, Tupac is shot five times. Two times in the head, left arm, thigh, groin. This is supposedly a robbery attempt, Tupac survives, he says Biggie set me up. Oh, those are some big magazine allegations. For whatever it's worth, Faith says that this is a big misunderstanding.

She expresses and has always expressed that she never heard Biggie express any kind of involvement in any kind of weapons-based antagonism, let's say, towards Tupac in any of the incidences that we're talking about. I am aware that like, Biggie was also like, habitually lying and keeping things from faith. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So there's, again, this is one of those things where like, you kind of need to use your own powers of discernment to figure out what's going on. I think Biggie could be a bit cheeky and then hide his hands but I don't actually

get the sense that he had like orchestrated a hit on Tupac here. Okay, okay. For whatever that's worth. Me, I, Taylor Basso, my whatever my word on the great rap Beeps of the 90s is worth which is you know whatever you've determined it is in the past 50 minutes, right? And when I say like, throwing stones and then hiding his hands, perhaps not helping matters is that Big released the whimsically titled song, Who Shot Ya?, question mark. Which he and everyone else involved in its production insist is not about Tupac, but honestly, I maybe don't blame Tupac, but honestly, I maybe don't blame Tupac for interpreting that song

the way he did. Yeah, yeah. During this time, Tupac is in jail for a really nasty sexual assault charge that I won't get into for time and space, but like a really not very nice sexual assault. Not that there are nice ones, but you know what I mean. And he's specifically reading as he's in jail,

he's reading a lot of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, and he seems to be becoming like very paranoid and vengeful about Biggie and Bad Boy during this time and their involvement in his being shot. Okay, okay. So another reason for this kind of paranoia might be that Tupac has been during his time in jail corresponding with Sugnite, the CEO of Death Row Records, Renaud of LA. Does that name mean anything to you, Sugnite? Yeah, I recognize it as a producer name and kind of like behind a lot of big acts. Yeah, that's exactly right. Sug is originally from Compton, a cradle of hip hop with infamously high crime rates and

a combative relationship between the locals and the LAPD, which that's a whole other podcast, right? Suga's a football player in Bodyguard who first comes to notice as Bobby Brown's Bodyguard, and he sort of becomes known as this like very big, imposing guy who gets his way through force. E.G. There is this rumor, and there's a lot of rumors about everyone in this story, right? But Sugnite is very surrounded by rumors and his mystique. There's a rumor that one of his artists, Chocolate, did a songwriting credit on Vanilla Ice's song, Ice Ice Baby, and Vanilla Ice was gonna stiff this guy Chocolate, so Sugnite dangled him off a balcony. Whoa, we're enjoying this Van vanilla ice and chocolate pairing, right?

Oh my god, well I'm sure the chocolate was running down vanilla ice's legs into a swirl when he was fucking hanging off that balcony. Because, oof, scary. That is, yeah, I would prefer not to do that. Or to see that, or to just, yeah, have that in the general, general world. Yeah, that's- Josie, if you don't like PooPoo, how about PeePee, Shugnait also rumored to have made somebody drink piss. Fuck dude. That's a power move. Bad man. Shug gets the funds to start Death Row from a dude named Harry O who's behind

bars for high level drug trafficking crimes. The way they described it in the documentary I watched is he's the type of guy who is like shaking hands with Noriega personally. Shug himself actively involved with organized crime while he runs Death Row in very brief. The main gangs are the Bloods in Red and the Crips in Blue. Shug is a blood, and so are the majority of the Death Row crew and talent, although not all. Okay. The Bloods are actively involved with the record label in the capacity of security slash extortion slash assault slash terror. A lot of departments, a lot of subcommittees.

We had to collapse this job into one. Listen, your pay isn't going up. We are gonna need you to do both extortion and terror. But you can have three slices of pizza instead of two at the death row holiday party. Just kidding. I'm sure death row threw some fucking fly parties. All the blow you want, boys. Oh my goodness. That's probably very true. Some perks.

Some perky perks. Straight out of the LAPD's evidence locker because by implication we are surrounded by crooked LAPD cops on the death row payroll as well. Oh, damn. I wonder how the healthcare was. I wonder what their dental plan is. If I do so much blow that I dissolved my septum, can I get a rebuild?

What's paid family leave like there? So if Lil' Kim and Tupac and Sean Combs are our secondary and tertiary antagonists- Yeah, duh. Wow. Star-studded tertiary situations. Sugnite is thought by many to be the primary antagonist of this whole saga. The invisible hand that puts into motion the events that lead to Biggie and Pox's deaths, and most probably the person pouring poison in Tupac's ear, poison

so potent that it led to Tupac's Hamlet-like revenge scheme on his former friend Big, as soon as I get out of jail, I'm gonna fuck Faith Evans. So, the first public shot between- well not the- let's not say the first ever, but like the first big, first big public cannonball between death row and bad boy. Yeah, there were some BB gun shots fired before, but now we're hauling out the heavy artillery. Now we're pulling out the heavy artillery. Yeah, exactly, you took the words right out of my mouth.

Well, the heavy artillery is coming out for the 1995 Source Music Awards. Held on August 3rd, 1995 at the Paramount Theatre, the event is described thusly by its Wikipedia intro. The award show was one of the most consequential and infamous events in the history of hip-hop, followed by five citations. Woah! So it's true. By now, bad boy is a certified hitmaker. Everything puffy touches turns to gold and Faith and Big are both there putting on a good face because they're the first couple of bad boy, though privately they're going through a period of estrangement. The

intrigue begins when Faith is backstage ahead of presenting an award and she hears a big reaction from the audience as sort of low like... Oh shi- Something has happened. Yeah, exactly. But it's muffled and she doesn't know what happened to make the audience react this way. What has happened is this. Sugnite took the stage to accept an award and as part of his remarks said, if you don't want the owner of your label on your album or in your video, come to Death Row.

That's a shot at Bad Boy and Puffy very much the type to give himself some shine with a featured verse on an artist's track or a cameo in an artist's music video. Yeah, yeah, don't forget me, I'm right here, yeah, hello, hello, yeah. This kind of tears the audience down partisan lines for the rest of the night, and there's an increasing tension in the air that eventually turns into outright hostility between the two sides. Snoop Dogg cusses out the East Coast audience at one point.

Finally, Puffy takes the stage and says, contrary to what other people may feel, I would like to say that I'm very proud of Dr. Dre, of Death Row, and Sugnite for their accomplishments. And all this East and West, that needs to stop. So give it up for everybody from the East and the West that won tonight, one love. Okay, Consulatory, yeah. Yeah, that's the vibe. Puffy's built shaking hands and kissing babies because that's his vibe, right? He's like an up and comer. Night and combs

talking out after the fact and while things are still uneasy, Faith Evans, for example, certainly doesn't have the sense that the whole thing will explode in the way that it eventually does. Although by her own admission, the East Coast, West Coast stuff is something that's only happening in her peripheral vision until it ends up taking over her life. Well, can I imagine she's got a few other things on her plate, like her career and her kids and her philandering husband, yeah. And she's also like, she's in the circle, but she's like just slightly outside of it, right? Because she's R& slightly outside outside of it right because she's R&B yeah like her career is like her audience is a little different and I do think that

she kind of comes to be on the outside looking in because she's a strand from Biggie and Biggie's the main event yeah a bit in his shadow perhaps and it's a very large shadow it's a big shadow right yeah and I should add by the way when Puffy said that thing about one love and let's all patch it up, Faith Evans was up there with him accepting the award, just like looking awkward as hell. Just like, oh, I fucking, what the fuck? So the way that Faith Evans gets involved in this East Coast, West Coast thing, it happens this way. In October 1995, Tupac leaves jail and is immediately flown to California on a private jet.

Okay, alright. This turns out to have been, can I shock you not at all, a sug night hire. Although Faith doesn't know this. When she runs into Tupac in LA at an after party for the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack on which one of her songs is featured. Tight. Okay, well then I have heard her stuff, because I've seen that movie. Oh yeah, you would, if there's a few faith, have you ever heard of um, I never knew there was a love like this before.

Oh yeah. I don't sound like her. That's great. That's Faith Evans. Yeah. She's had an event for Waiting to Exhale and she runs into Tupac at this event. Okay. And she knows that Biggie and Poc have this peripheral drama, this very serious, like shooting based peripheral drama. Yeah. But Tupac is being very cordial with her, although she notices that a picture of the two of them together is taken almost instantly by a random photographer who just kind of like operates like, take a pic.

Oh. And she thinks that's a little bit weird because much will go on to be made of this photograph of them together. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure. Fan the flames with that one. So she and Tupac party together and he asks her if she would be interested in doing a collab with him. They agree that she'll write and perform a verse for one of his songs for

$25,000 and that she can tape the next day. I don't even know if she knows at this point that it's a Tupac song. I think she might just think it's a song that he's like working on or has written or something but I don't think she thinks she's gonna be on a Tupac song. I think she might just think it's a song that he's like working on or has written or something But I don't think she thinks okay. She's gonna be on a Tupac song although. She is yeah, oh, okay Tomorrow arrives He picks her up in a black convertible with the top down almost like he wants to be seen because he's fucking Tupac Shakur driving around in LA in a fucking top-down convertible in 1995 Yeah, fresh out of jail rush stepped fresh off of that private jet. Yeah, the delivered into jail.

Shiny bald head with Biggie's wife, right? Yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa. He takes her to the studio and they go in, I think they might go in like via the back or something and it's not until she gets in and she looks at all the signs that say death row all over that she realizes where he's brought her. If you'll forgive the constant illusions, this is very Capulet Montague shit right here. She's an enemy territory. She's the princess of the other side, but she's in the death row castle. And not only does she have to sit there for hours to wait to

do this song with Tupac and like make awkward conversation with all of these people that she's supposed to be blood enemies with, but Tupac comes out and says, the song that you're gonna be singing is called Wonder Why They Call You Bitch. Oh. It's a song basically, I think it's supposed to be maybe in response to people who criticized him for being misogynistic. And I've gotta say, it seems like his response to that accusation was to release a quite misogynistic and I've got to say it seems like his response to that accusation was truly so quite misogynistic. Is he being a troll or is it just kind of an idiotic move? Who knows? Or is it like, is it deliberately meant to humiliate Faith because she's very uncomfortable? Which is misogynistic in its own nature. Yeah, it's basically a song cussing out somebody who's a gold digger, right? And Faith comes in with her beautiful voice doing like the one,

what? Well, that's not Faith's beautiful voice. She does the back and track and she's very, very awkward about it. She really just wants to blow this place and leave. And she remembers what happens to Two Pocket Quad Studios and she's like, oh, I'm the only person, I'm the bad boy person. What if I'm about to get fucking shot? What if I'm about to get this that? What if I'm about to get this thatter? Like something really bad could happen to me here. Right, yeah, yeah. I can't just say, no, I'm not doing this,

and I'm leaving. I'm walking out that door. That might not go down the way she'd like to. But also, like, am I about to get, am I about to get killed? Like, what is, everyone's being nice to me, but is it like, what's going on? Very stressful situation for Faith. Oh, no.

And it's about to get much worse. Trigger, Warrenan, coming for what's going on? Very stressful situation for Faith. Oh no. And it's about to get much worse. Trigger, Warrenan coming for what's ahead. Basically what happens is Tupac says, my manager is coming to my hotel with the paycheck. We can either wait and I'll give you the paycheck tomorrow or you can come and get it from the hotel now. And Faith isn't gonna wait for her money on this one. She wants this to be over so she goes to the hotel now.

Eventually he coaxes her up to the hotel room. And basically, the scene as Faith describes it is that he at first just kind of starts berating her with some paranoid East Coast, West Coast shit about, you're all in on it, da-da-da-da. And Faith very genuinely is like, I'm not in on, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not in on anything, Big wouldn't do that.

Yeah. All of this shit, right? And then he basically demands, he tries to coerce her into sucking his dick. He demands it. Oh. He's really forceful with her. After this very scary interaction at the studio where she's like, Then he's very clearly kind of like architected into existence.

Yeah. Like he's very clearly, he's been reading his sun suit and his Machiavelli, and he's very clearly like contrived a situation into existence. And she refuses, she starts crying, he gets really like, well what the fuck, you don't want it, you don't want it, you're out of there. She ends up leaving, nothing happens between them. Does she get her check? At least? No, she doesn't get paid. Oh, fuck. She's like, yeah, Chuck that went up to an experience

and I'm like, that's a shame. You're out 25 grand and he really, he really tried to assault you real hard there. This combination of things, Faith being photographed with Tupac and then featuring on his song ignites the rumor mill as it will. Yeah, as it was designed to do from the get-go. As it was deliberately

designed to, his whole plan was I'm gonna humiliate Biggie by fucking his wife in public. That was his whole plan. Yeah. Even outside this Tupac thing things are not great between Biggie and Faith. Faith was listening to the Wendy Williams show and on the radio, because she was the radio. Oh, okay. And she heard little Kim come on. Uh-oh. And you know how our girl Wendy Williams is? She she wants that that dirt. Yeah. And she asked Kim about Biggie and Faith and Kim replies, please, they broke up. They not wearing no wedding rings. She moved out. They ate together no more. Oh no. Which up until this point I'm pretty sure Faith and Biggie have been like very fronting that everything is fine between them. Yeah. And this is like

the big reveal that there is not that they're on the rocks. And it's outed by little Kim too. And it's outed by little Kim. On the Wendy Williams radio show. Whoa. On the Wendy Williams radio show in front of God and everybody and fucking she sounds a little happy almost And so yeah faith is kind of on the warpath and she runs into biggie's boys do be and creamy and She just cut she cuts a promo on fucking Kim. She's like oh the way she sounded you'd think she was fucking biggie and do be and creamy you're like Don't make eye contact don't, ah. Don't make eye contact, don't make eye contact, don't make eye contact. And now Faith knows that Biggie is fucking Kim.

And by the way, to get that information from Doobie and Creamy disaster. That's not good, no, that's a no-go. Oh, Big, oh, you've, you've, you're, your cowardly ways have fucked you again, truly, because that's not, that's not who tells your wife about little Kim It's fucking do be in creamy Or to put it in face words quote I was so busy beating every other chick up and down the eastern seaboard that I missed the one

Right in front of my face. Oh Who among us? Who among us? she confronts big and Who among us? She confronts Big and like Big does, he just admits it outright. He's been fucking Lil Kim the whole time before they were married, while they were married. All that, we were just friends, shit was a lie, all that, take her shopping and take her to the gym, all of it.

They have what is sort of remarked upon by Faith as being like very like passionless sex at that point because I think these two just have a lot of sex together even in their periods of estrangement when they meet up they tend to have sex. Biggie and Faith. Biggie and Faith. But like this wasn't making this was sort of like closure sex in a way although they would continue to have sex but it was like emotional closure sex. You had to be there. There's another loose end in this story that needs to be dealt with though. Faith picks up the phone and calls whoever she needs to call

and she says, get me on the Wendy Williams show tomorrow. And Faith goes on the Wendy Williams show where she says, Kim, you better watch your back because when I see you, it's on. Oh damn. So Faith has now like publicly issued. I'm gonna be, you know how Faith is. I'm gonna fucking clatter you. And if Biggie doesn't have his hands full with a strange way, Faith and side chick Kim, he's also got a full time girlfriend, Charlie Baltimore,

a model who is notable as the Faith Evans lookalike whom Biggie kicks out of the house in his music video for Get Money. Oh! Oh damn. He hired a girl who looked like Faith to be the Faith that he kind of kicks out of the house in the song that he's doing with Lil Kim. And she's again, she's like 19. Yeah.

And he starts dating her, her name's Charlie Baltimore. Oh my gosh. And if they both don't have their hands full enough, what happens is Faith gets pregnant with Biggie's child even though they're estranged. Every child is wanted in some way, shape or form. That's true. That's why I didn't say bad.

It's not a bad thing. She loves her. She loves CJ very much. Yeah. It's not the situation that everybody exactly would choose in a perfect situation. No. No. When your marriage is in flames, you hope that

you don't start a new beginning in that fire that has yet to be put out, but the Phoenix will rise again, I guess. Too true, and speaking of things rising again, that old rumor mill kicks into action. Is it Biggie's baby, or is it Pox? Oh, good. Even Biggie gets in a little funny on his collab with Jay-Z, Brooklyn's finest, we call him Jay-Z in Canada. Yeah, as you should. Quote, if Faye had twins, she'd probably have two Pox. Get it? Two Pox?

Oh, god. Well, Faith didn't think that was funny. Either she was fucking livid. I was like, I think it's kind of like a dumb joke. I mean, I understand that Faith is like very upset. It's a dumb joke. But it's also just like not a good joke. Not good comedy.

It's not good comedy. Not befitting one of the greatest MCs of all time. Faith has several reasons to be livid. One, Big didn't tell her about this lyric till she heard it on the radio. Two, she was supposed to have twins, but one didn't make it to term. Three, she didn't fuck Tupac.

That's like that middle one. I mean, all of them intense and all that. Very true, but that second one is pretty sad. That's kind of like, that's cruel. Insensitive for the father to do. It's also on this time that Sugun Tupac start doing innuendo-laden interviews with the New York Times, insinuating that Faith bought Tupac a new wardrobe because they were romantically linked or that Faith pawned her wedding ring and took Tupac shopping in Hawaii, all of which Faith denies, obviously.

Yeah. She's like, I'm fucking pregnant. I didn't go to Hawaii. This is an isolating time for Faith personally and professionally and she's falling out of the loop more and more with Bad Boy as she refuses to work tours and other dates for free which brings her into conflict with Puffy. Speaking of Bad Boy in conflict, Faith gets a phone call from her dear friend Missy Elliott. Lil Kim is here at the studio. Oh shit! Say no more.

Oh shit! Faith brings her friends and a gun and she beats little Kim from pillar to post. I don't think the gun is used but she uh, she goes up and down that girl. Faith is quite pregnant when this happens. I promised relative non-judgment of our players so instead I'll offer a patented bittersweet infamy don't try this at home. Faith ends up taking Kim's wig and keeping it in her kitchen cabinet for several months, which wears out her friends who really want her to get rid of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let that one go. Let that one go, babe. I believe there is like a hand-off exchange for the wig. The wig does end up being returned to its rightful owner in the end, I believe. Oh, okay.

Oh. I like to resolve my narrative threads. I'm sorry. No, fair. The next major metaphorical shot fired between the sides is the release of Tupac's B-side Hit'em Up which holds a special reputation as the most disrespectful diss track of all time. It's a clever little bit of musical business that recalls a pastiche of Biggie's previous

hits. Tupac, backed up by the outlaws, explains in no uncertain terms that he's going to kill Biggie, he's going to kill everyone on Bad Boy, with guns, he's going to murder their children. Suffice it to say, he goes in and invigorates individual people. He goes in on Prodigy from Mob Deep, a fifth tier character in this drama, for having sickle-cell anemia which would later kill him. That's like...

It's very specific and mean. That is... That's a bit rough, eh? Like... It's very rough! And he roasts the entire Junior Mafia one by one, little Kim for fucking Big E. And of course, the second deliric is, that's why I fucked your bitch, you fat motherfucker. Yeah... Ugh...

And, uh, shortly afterwards, you claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife. Oh gosh. Uh oh. The tension between sides is now an inferno, with all of the major and bit players sniping at one another in the press at any given opportunity. September 7th, 1996, about three months after the release of Hit'em Up. Tupac and Shugniter together in Las Vegas when Tupac is killed in a drive-by shooting. What we know now, as of 2024, is this. When Tupac and Shug were leaving the arena after a Mike Tyson fight, Tupac attacked a guy named Orlando Baby Lane

Anderson in the parking lot. This is supposedly because Anderson was a Crip, Tupac having been indoctrinated into the Bloods through his acquaintanceship with Shook. The shooting, which took place later at a traffic stop, is believed to have been carried out by Anderson, who died later in an unrelated shooting, and his uncle Dwayne Keefe D. Davis, who was arrested for the crime in 2023

and is currently awaiting trial. Oh wow, in 2023? In 2023. And still awaiting trial, yeah, so it's kind of like. And still awaiting trial. Oh wow, in 2023. In 2023. And still awaiting trial. Yeah, so it's kind of like. And still awaiting trial. It's supposed to be in 2024 in the trial. We don't know whether it will be, we'll see, but that's what's set. Yeah. In any event, Tupac was hit with four bullets and died in hospital six days later on September 13th, 1996. So as you noted, the date of that arrest 2023, it took a long time to get to this knowledge set. Yeah, well, there's a lot of other other things floating around. So a lot of

A lot of theories and a lot of distractions and a lot of this that and the other. And in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, three months post hit them up, rumors in innuendo about who may or may not be responsible for Tupaced staff are flying because of course we have two pox public accusations that biggie was responsible for his 1994 shooting right we have public threats from two pox to biggie on this song hit em up and we have an aggrieved sug knight a survivor of this shooting mind you on the war path whoa things are uneasy in the hip-hop industry but it's not all bad news for Biggie and Faith as they welcome their son CJ Wallace. Seems like that should chill things out but it doesn't.

Faith finds Biggie in bed with Kim and beats her again. Kim keys every surface of Faith's car like really goes to town on it. Faith slashes Kim's tires, etc. The drama between East and West Coast continues unabated too, so Biggie goes on a diplomatic mission of sorts. The 1997 Soul Train Awards are taking place in Los Angeles and Biggie's days out from releasing his second album, Life After Death. So while he does some promo, he can smooth over the rough edges with some conciliatory interviews and hopefully bring down the temperature of this fiery vendetta. Tupac will be missed, he was a great artist, yeah, blah blah blah, yeah yeah. Yeah.

Faith Evans also comes out, she's four months post-CJ and she's excited to be out and about doing things while not pregnant. I get that. She's meeting up with this guy, Todd, for their first date. She books a bulletproof Benz for her and her friends because that seems expedient. And they go to the SoulTrain... Where does one book a bulletproof Benz on the fly? Bad boy would know. If anybody has the lake. They got a garage in the back, yeah. Exactly. She books the bulletproof Benz and they go to the SoulTrain Awards and then they go to Vibes After Party at the Peterson Automotive

Museum, which seems like an incredibly cool place for a party. Yeah, the vibes must have been really good. Well, not between Biggie and Faith, she sees him at the party, but she describes herself as too prideful and too immature to go over and say hello, and well, Biggie will send a guy over to invite Faith over, he won't come himself, so the two of them just kind of orbit each other at this party making awkward pseudo eye contact and that is the last interaction they will ever have. Oh no. Oh wow. Life is short dude. Life is short. Dude. Too true. It was all a dream. Shortly after midnight on March 9th 1997 the party is shut down by the fire marshal due to overcrowding as the notorious

bi g leaves for another party and after after party his suburban is sprayed with four bullets from a black Impala he is pronounced dead at Cedar Sinai at 1 15 a.m. This is just a small note at the funeral somebody sang I will always love you and apparently little Kim was in the back going like I will I will always love you Oh, well and Valetta Wallace leans into Faith Evans is like someone needs to like calm her down like someone someone needs to talk to her Yeah, yeah, someone needs to share some words with that young woman. Yes wisdom in her time of grief Yeah, no one has ever been arrested for the murder of Christopher

Wallace, aka the notorious VIG. The Black Impala. Yep, the two most common prevailing theories are the LAPD's theory, which is that Big was shot by a now deceased member of the Bloods named Darnell Poochee Fouse, and that of Big's family, which is that corrupt members of the LAPD were responsible for his death. Okay, yeah. Could it be both? I don't know. Well, in either case, a popular theory is that Biggs murderer carried out the orders of Shug Knight as revenge for the murder of Tupac Shakur, which he perceived to have been caused by Biggie. Yeah. I'm not the one saying that, Shug. Don't make me drink piss. The Wallace family filed a $400 million wrongful Beth Lawsuit against the LAPD that went on

for many years before finally being dismissed. Oh wow, okay, okay. 16 days after his murder, big second album, Life After Death, is released. Oh, duh. It hits number one on the Billboard 200. Oh yeah! Life after death, right? Oh yeah!

By name and by nature, art imitates life. Later on, Puffy, Faith Evans, and the group 112 come together to release the Grammy-winning single, I'll Be Missing You, an elegy to the late Natoyas B.I.G. Faith reports feeling pressured by Puffy to perform in the video and on stage when she wasn't up to it due to grief. And says his treatment of her during this time influenced her to move in another direction with her career. She's supported in this by her new boyfriend Todd, who has supported her through this traumatic event. The guy who she was supposed to go on her first date with the night that Notorious B.I.G. was murdered.

Wow. That's a bad... they had to rain check that bitch, but apparently he was very, very kind about the whole thing. And he will eventually become her manager, her husband, the father of two more children, and eventually her ex-husband. Romance can be very bittersweet. Yeah, well especially when your husband becomes your manager. Business and pleasure, right?

Yeah, moving along, yeah. To each other. Where does everyone end up? Sug Knight is currently serving a 28-year jail sentence due to hit-and-run manslaughter. That apparently that three-strikes law got him real hard. Death Row Records, once the hottest label in music, couldn't sustain its level of criminality and controversy, especially as stars left were imprisoned or died. The label filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and has since been auctioned off as a trading card to various multinationals. It was memorably a division of Hasbro. Oh man, your cred really drops. Capitalism is a name there. Capitalism is a monster.

Bad Boy Records is still around. Notable artists include Janelle Monay, Machine Gun Kelly, and of course, old puff daddy himself, Sean Combs, who achieved his dream of becoming a mega mogul and then some, and as alluded earlier, is currently entangled in quite the legal predicament re-sexual assault lawsuits. May Justice be done. Yes. Yes. And as for Faith, her lives and loves and professional successes extend to the present day. She started her own record label imprint Prolific and then signed on with E1 Entertainment.

She's been involved in acting and reality TV. With distance and wisdom, she seems to have patched things up with the various rivals from her past, including Lil' Kim, whom she introduced thusly at the 2016 Hip Hop Awards. Kim's enormous skill belied her diminutive stature, she matched Biggs wit and earned her respect. She went toe to toe with him. Shit, sometimes she even went toe to toe with me. Hello! Faith Evans released her memoir Keeping the Faith in 2009, in the book which covers her life until publishing with most of the narrative being devoted to her time at bad boy she says I want people to

understand that although he was a large part of my life my story doesn't actually begin or end with big stuff. My journey has been complicated on many levels and since I'm always linked to big there are a lot of misconceptions about who I really am. While she still finds her public perception to be entangled with big she also actively memorializes him in 2017. She released The King and I, a posthumous collaboration album with her late husband. CJ, her son with Big, is now an actor and a rapper, and her daughter China performs as well. And while their story continues to the present day, the story of this bittersweet romance ends here.

here. Whoa dude. Some capital D drama. Magazines, radio shows. My gosh. My gosh. Awards, so many awards shows and awards show after parties ruined by this drama. What a little 90s glimpse, baby. Not to keep hammering the Shakespeare illusion home over and over again, but I saw a lot of really interesting people with a lot of like really tragic flaws acting on like asymmetrical information in a way that like ends up in a big pile of bodies in the final act. It's very Shakespeare and I was really like taken by I think just like the sheer scope of the drama and how intrigued I was by all of the many people. It is a recognizable story in that way. Yeah, the tilted information, the like coming in guns blazing because you have- Tupac knows this, but doesn't know this. Faith knows this, but doesn't know this. Biggie and Kim, but doesn't know- Sugnite is just stirring the pot the whole time. Yeah, Sugnite is our Iago, and it's one of those things where you get the unfortunate sense

that for whatever their other flaws were, in a perfect world, maybe Biggie and Tupac could have had a conversation and realized what was happening. You know what I mean? Yeah, that they were being kind of used and like. Yeah, as was faith. And you get the sense that Puffy and especially Shug were really kind of in this to make Kings of themselves and that there was a lot of collateral damage to that.

And then also, I guess, what a waste. As presented in this telling, the likelihood that Tupac's shooting had absolutely nothing to do with Biggie and was simply like this whole other more clandestine issue and probably similarly like enmeshed with false information and rivalry. Yeah. Yeah, it's really fucked up. It's really fucked up. Yeah, deeply, deeply so. It is my offer for a bittersweet romance. I present to you the first couple of Bad Boy, the first couple of hip hop, notorious B.I.G. and Faith Evans.

Yeah, Doug. Yeah. And little Kim from time to time. Time to time, but consistent, still consistent. Maybe not frequent, but consistent. Ha ha ha. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinthamy.com.

Or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. K-O-F-I-dot-com forward slash bittersweetinthamy. But no pressure. Bittersweetinthamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetanthemy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet.

The sources that I used for this anth mindfulness include an article from the always trustworthy New York Post. Meet the sexy Egyptology scholars who dress like Indiana Jones characters. Written by Raquel Amiri, published November 12, 2022. I also read an article in the Daily Yale News, NELC Work Environment Criticized, written by Nicole Norea and Julia Zorthian. Published January 23, 2013, I read an article from Hyperallergy, entitled How Academics, Egyptologists, and even Melania Trump benefit from colonialist cosplay.

Written by Catherine Blune, Monica Hanna, and Sarah E. Bond. Published October 22nd, 2020. I looked at Colleen Darnell's bio as posted on Yale.academia.eu, and I found John Darnell's bio as posted on Archaeological Institute of America. And lastly, I looked at the Instagram account for vintage Egyptologist, maintained by Colleen Darnell and John Darnell. The sources that I used for this week's episode included Keep the Faith, the 2009 memoir by Faith Evans. I watched Episode 2 of Season 1 of Hopelessly in Love, Faith Evans, a notorious B.I.G. I watched the first episode of Death Row Chronicles, Sugnite Partners with Dr. J, Change Hip Hop Forever. That was on the YouTube account BTNetworks. I watched the 1995 Source Awards on the YouTube account Third Eye Vision Stick-a-Valley.

I read Notorious B.I.G. Murder Case. Finally time for answers, question mark on ABC News August 2nd, 2006. And I read the February 7th to 9th versions of many Wikipedia articles including Notorious VIG, Tupac Shakur 1995 Source Awards, the murder of Tupac Shakur, the murder of Notorious VIG, and the 1967 Newark riots. I want to give a huge thank you to our monthly coffee subscribers, John Mountain, Danerica Joe, as well as our one-time supporter Lizzie D. Thank you very much. If you want to join them and have your name at the end of an episode, you can support us at ko-fi.com slash bittersweetofme. You also get access to the Bittersweet Felton Club.

We're going to be talking about the honeymoon killers that drops in three days of Valentine's Day. Bittersweet of Me is a club member of the 604 Podcast Network. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins, the song that you're currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Happy Valentine's Day, lovers.