In the mid 1990s producer Chucky Thompson (of Bad Boy Entertainment's "Hitmen" team), was fooling around on a piano in the studio, playing a sequence he'd made up when he was sixteen. A young Faith Evans came charging through the door, telling him she needed to record to that. He laughed, and told her, sure, write something to it. Evans went back upstairs and Thompson didn't think much of the interaction. He had a flight to catch in a few hours and was just killing time.
A few minutes later, Bad Boy CEO Puff Daddy ran down the stairs, yelling about some crazy hook Evans had just wrote, and wondering what Thompson had played her. As Thompson told You Know I Got Soul, Puff wouldn't stop pestering him, yelling, “Which song did you play for her on the piano? Whatever it is, I don’t care. You need to do that record before you leave.” Reluctantly, Thompson went upstairs and helped produce the hook right there. Evans wanted to do a whole song, but Thompson had to leave for his flight.
When he landed, he had a voicemail from Evans. It was the finished song, which she called "Soon As I Get Home". She had done it while he was in the air and wanted to hear his opinion. "I never touched that song again", says Thompson, it was perfect.
"Soon As I Get Home" was the second single on Evans' debut album, Faith. It's a story about a struggling relationship, with a promise from one person to make up for whatever they did wrong to other, as soon as they get home. Some say Evans wrote this as the apologizer, others think she wanted her husband, The Notorious B.I.G., to say these words to her. Either way, it's still considered today one of the best soul-pop songs from the 1990s. When Evans was asked to choose her favourite songs from her career, guess which topped the list?
You can learn more about Faith Evans here:
About the curator - Cormac McGee
Cormac McGee is a DJ, artist manager and concert promoter based in Toronto, Canada. He’s played in front of crowds from 10 – 1,000 people and has run concerts with some of today’s top hip hop artists, including Drake, Future, Mac Miller, 6lack, Ab-Soul and more. He also runs the Music Den at Ryerson University, a business incubator for entrepreneurs in the music industry.
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