Yesterday, Faith Evans made an appearance on Dame Dash’s radio show, in which she confirmed that The King and I — a posthumous collaborative album with her late husband, the Notorious B.I.G. — will arrive this September. “If he was alive, I know we’d have done something like this,” Evans told Dash of the project she first spoke about in 2014. “But the way it’s coming together — his vocals — it’s giving the stuff new light. It’s totally different,” she said.
The King and I follows a similar trajectory to Bad Boy Records’ compilation Duets: The Final Chapter, in which the Brooklyn rap legend’s unreleased verses were edited into collaborative tracks with the likes of Jay-Z and Eminem. But Evans’ project has a naturally different vibe; she’s previously described its tone as “Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole.” She’s also mined Big’s old interviews for instances in which he spoke about their relationship and plans to use them in transitional pieces or interludes on the project.
Dash asked how she plans to perform the material, and Evans confirmed that a hologram is in development. “I don’t necessarily know to what extent I’m gonna perform with it, but I want to debut it in the first video for the album,” she said. “We’ll be able to license it out, but it’ll be very few and far between. For example: if this Bad Boy tour ever really happens, that might be something we might consider,” she said of the hologram’s potential future appearances.
The pair also shared an intimate moment when reflecting about their relationships with fallen icons. “I know how I feel being next to someone that was so legendary,” said the former Roc-A-Fella Records CEO (though he did not mention her name, implications throughout the conversation pointed to his girlfriend, Aaliyah). “There are personal moments, but you just want the rest of the world to experience the greatness of that person, like what made them so great. You got to intimately know that — the thing that made them affect the rest of the world,” Dash mused to Evans, who heartfully agreed.
Credits
Text Emily Manning
Image via YouTube