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The love triangle that ran much deeper than we fought.
Let's talk about it.
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Hi, guys.
Welcome to the Channel.
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Let's get into it.
So Biggie was one of bad boys first artists.
He alongside Craig, Mack brought success to the label early on.
He met Faith at a photoshoot, and Faith was actually the first female artist of Bad Boy.
Faith grew up singing in church and was set to go to college.
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But she ended up working as a backup singer for I'll Be Sure, and that's when she was
noticed by Puffy.
He was so impressed with her talent, he offered to sign her after his bad boy photo shoot.
Biggie asked Faith for a ride to Brooklyn, and the two of them hit it off.
Biggie told Vibe that he fell for faith fast and hard.
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I married her after knowing her eight days and I was happy.
That was my baby.
At the same time, with us being so spontaneous, we did it backwards.
Maybe she won't admit it, but I will.
We should have got to know each other and then got married.
The relationship kind of dissolved, but we're still going to be friends.
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I love her.
So they married on August the fourth, 1994.
In an interview with Fat Joe, Faith said it wasn't quite eight days between the time they
got married, but it was more like two and a half months.
So they were only 21 when they got married and Biggie was still living with his mother.
Faith actually had a daughter, too.
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He she said, considered Biggie a father.
Photographer Emmett Johnson is known for taking those iconic photos of the couple that were
taken under Brooklyn Bridge with the New York City skyline behind them.
Like Faith, Emmett is from Newark, New Jersey.
He became interested in photography because when he would visit his local record store
in Jersey, he was captivated by the different album covers.
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He was inspired by punk rock bands and artists such as Blondie.
He really admired the raw style of the photos.
In the late eighties, Emmett began to get into hip hop and would take photos of different
people coming out of clubs, and he would send his work to different record companies.
He would find the addresses on the back of the album covers, call them up and ask for
the name of the person in the art department, he said.
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As hip hop took off, so did his career.
He took photos for Vibe and various hip hop publications.
He said Biggie at the time was getting a lot of airplay on radio and was basically blowing
up the charts.
Faith and Biggie were Newlyweds at the time and hip hop's golden couple.
It was Vibe who actually commissioned the photo shoot.
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Most album covers were indoor shots.
Eric wanted to do something different, so he decided to take it outside.
Eric said that Biggie was boyish and endearing.
He said, quote, He kept looking under the bridge and going, Is this where they dump
the dead bodies?
Eric used 120 Ektachrome film and a mixture of flash photography and natural light.
He said the couple were very much connected and quite playful during the shoot.
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This was at the start of Faith's career.
He said the following.
Later on, I took some shots of Biggie in the car at night on his own, which people now
tell me look really eerie.
There was one shot from the session of Biggie Smiling, which the record company later used
as the cover for a single.
His mother says she loved that photo because she never usually saw him smiling.
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Eric said the whole East versus West Coast beef began to gain traction, and he said the
area received some threats from West Coast rappers.
Who even accused him of appropriating West Coast style because of the style of the photos
and the type of photography that he used.
He was supposed to do another shoot with Biggie in L.A. that was commissioned by Face magazine.
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They told Eric that they were unable to pinpoint Biggie's exact location because he was receiving
death threats.
They wanted to fly him out there, but they were awaiting confirmation from Bad Boy.
Next thing Eric heard was that Biggie had been killed.
Biggie a Lil Kim met when they were teenagers in the Brooklyn area.
She used to do a lot of freestyling in the local area and he was impressed by her talent.
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He invited her to join Junior Mafia, which was a group that he had put together, which
included his cousin Lil Cease.
As Biggie's career took off.
He felt a need to help the local kids within his community to help them break into the
industry, too, so that they could find the same success that he had.
A lot of people assumed that Kim was signed to Bad Boy.
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But she was actually signed to Big Beat Records, which went on to become Atlantic Records.
In the book Keep the Faith a memoir, Faith describes sneaking into Biggie's house and
finding him there with Kim.
She told Fat Joe in 2020.
I've always adored Kim.
When I first met Kim, I had no inkling of anything going on with her.
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When big, big treated me like I was very special.
And that's why it was kind of shocking when I did find out.
I was shocked.
The marriage was tumultuous from very early on and they were already having problems way
before Faith found out about Biggie and Kim.
They got into a physical altercation.
But in the book, Faith said she actually felt sorry for Kim saying the following.
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I have to say I actually felt some pity for Kim because of wife, and she settled for messing
with him.
Then he started dating Tiffany and became a wife and a mistress, and Kim still settled
for being the other woman.
It seemed pretty sad to settle for that.
Kim was actually asked to leave after the altercation, which was Faith basically attacking
her.
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Faith said that Kim later returned to scratch up her car.
She said she found her car scratched up from the hood to the bonnet.
And when Faith attacked Kim, she was actually pregnant at the time.
She said that she pitied Kim, but Faith also put up with a lot, too.
Now, they had actually separated at the time, but had a brief reconciliation.
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But after this incident, Faith said she separated from him for good.
So producer Chucky Thompson, who is part of Bad Boys Hitman team, was jamming in the studio
one day playing a sequence of chords on the piano, a chord sequence that he had made up
when he was just 16.
He was set to get on a plane within a few hours, but when Faith heard the song, she
insisted that she wanted to write a track to it.
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He didn't really take her seriously, but she went upstairs to get working on it.
Just a few minutes later, Puffy came running down the stairs saying Faith had wrote a crazy
hook.
He asked Chucky to show him what it was he was playing when he heard the melody.
He said he wanted everyone to work on the song immediately and that no one was to leave
until the song was done.
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Chucky said that Puffy pestered him until he agreed.
You'll be happy to know that Chucky didn't miss his flight.
He got on the plane and when he landed, he said there was a voicemail waiting for him.
And I had to look up whether this was on an actual cell phone or maybe a car phone.
Apparently, Motorola bag phones were pretty popular back then, but it could have just
been his answering machine.
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But he said when he listened to the voicemail, it was the finished song.
He said, quote, I never touched that song again.
It was perfect in the lifetime documentary Hopelessly in Love.
Five said that she wrote the song, hoping to hear those exact words from an apologetic
biggie.
But sadly, those words never came.
While editing, I found out the sad news that Chucky actually passed away last year in a
Los Angeles hospital at the age of 53.
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The cause of death was stated to be covid.
Biggie had already started dating Charli Baltimore, a.k.a.
Tiffany, while he was married to Faith still.
But before there was a Charlie or Faith, it was actually Kim who had started dating Biggie
quite early on.
Biggie's his former business manager, Lance Rivera, said in a documentary the following:
Kim and Biggie, they were in the real relationship.
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Without a doubt, they were in love.
Way before Biggie met Faith, Lance said, When Biggie married Faith, the first person he
thought of was Kim.
Knowing that she wouldn't take it very well, to put it lightly.
To Kim, Biggie was the person who believed in her.
He invited her to join Junior Mafia and really helped get their careers going.
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He apparently wrote all their music too, and was basically the brains behind everything.
It is during this time they became close.
So first she must have felt that she had lost him to faith, and then she saw him get into
a relationship with Charli Baltimore.
Now, obviously, she probably should have moved on, but she didn't.
And they carried on seeing each other.
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Kim has said that she is a very sensitive person and when she heard about Biggie and
Faith, she flipped.
She lost it.
Faith and Kim's paths crossed as Biggie toured with junior mafia.
Faith said when she met Kim, she thought she was cool and she wasn't insecure about her
husband being around female artists.
But unfortunately, Faith began to have her suspicions, and she had to become somewhat
of a detective within the marriage.
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She would basically try to catch him red handed, so to speak, even if it involved jumping on
a plane and going to his hotel room.
And that's what happened a couple of times.
Most of the songs on her first album were inspired by Biggie.
As Soon As I Get Home reached three in the R&B charts and it was certified gold.
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Her debut album reached two in the R&B charts and went platinum.
During one of their brief separations, Kim happened to go on Wendy Williams when she
was asked about faith.
She sounded quite dismissive saying that she doesn't know whether they're still together.
During one of the hotel incidents where Faith had caught Biggie, she decided to move out
of their family home in Brooklyn.
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She took her daughter and left in the meantime.
Biggie ended up dating Charli Baltimore, who he met while he was on tour with Junior Mafia.
Johnny said she was really taken in by his personality and said he had the best sense
of humor.
Four or five months in, he had told her that he loved her.
Despite still being married to faith, she was basically officially his girlfriend, I
guess.
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Even though he was a married man and Faith had to see it all unfold within the press
and within the media.
On February the third, 1996, Junior Mafia released their first single from their debut
album, Conspiracy.
The video for Get Money featured Lil Kim and Charli Baltimore.
Lil Kim basically had no choice but to be in the video because she rapped on the track.
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Faith said she was initially asked to appear in the video, but obviously she declined and
she said that's when Biggie asked Charli to take her place.
The video seemed mad disrespectful towards faith, especially as it featured Kim and Charli,
his girlfriend and sidekick, or both sidekicks.
It was basically taken to be a diss track towards her.
The whole thing was humiliating towards faith because word got around that Biggie was going
to feature a lookalike and then it happened to be his girlfriend.
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Faith stressed that the song itself wasn't about her.
She was actually there in the studio when he recorded it.
But yeah, because the song wasn't about me and I knew that at the time people were trying
to say that because we had separated.
He thought it would be dope if I was in the video, which it probably would have been,
you know, kind of just to let people understand, like, nah, he's not trying to go in on me.
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But at the same time, because he and I weren't cool for our personal issues, I didn't want
to do it, you know, so I didn't do it.
It's no secret that Kim's appearance has drastically changed over the years.
In some photos, she's unrecognizable.
When Lil Kim first came on the scene, she was considered one of the most beautiful women
in hip hop, as well as one of the most stylish.
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But she may have experienced some discrimination or rejection within the industry because she
didn't fit a certain standard of beauty.
And one can't help but notice that Biggie had a certain type.
Everyone talked about how similar Charli, Baltimore and Faith were in aesthetics and
appearance.
Did Kim try to morph herself into a similar aesthetics over the years?
Of course, some of the photos we've seen that have made people do a double take may be due
to the use of a filter or using makeup that's like ten shades lighter.
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But there's no doubt that she has had a lot of work done.
The shape of her nose, even the shape of her face seems to have changed over the years.
This certainly does not look like the same person down here.
And as far as the lighting, the lighting clearly is different in both places.
So I don't think that these picture this picture right here was Photoshopped.
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I think they caught her, you know, in mid something or another.
Could the experience of rejection at various stages of her life and going through that
whole love triangle mess contributed to insecurities?
She was basically competing, so to speak, with two mixed race women.
Faith's Father, who she has never met, is Italian and Charli, Baltimore's father, is
German.
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All my life, men have told me I wasn't pretty enough.
Even the men I was dating.
And I'll be like, Well, why are you with me then?
It's always been men putting me down, just like my dad.
To this day, when someone says I'm cute, I can't see it.
I don't see it no matter what anybody says.
And let's face it, Biggie wasn't exactly the Tyson Beckford of hip hop.
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He had a lot of confidence and that attracted women.
So many must have thought that Biggie was lucky to be dating someone like Kim, but she
didn't see it that way clearly.
Especially when he ended up marrying Faith.
It has been suggested that Kim may be suffering from body dysmorphia because having a lot
plastic surgery is usually something that comes along with that condition.
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But she's never been diagnosed of anything like that, to our knowledge.
In the article.
She went on to say, I have low self-esteem and I always have guys always cheated on me
with women who were European looking.
You know, the long hair type.
Really beautiful women.
That left me thinking, how can I compete with that?
Being a regular black girl wasn't good enough.
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When asked about her implants, she said that surgery was the most pain I've ever been in
my life.
But people made such a big deal about it.
White women get them every day.
It was to make me look the way I wanted to look.
It's my body.
At Biggie's funeral, the person that stood out the most to many observers was Kim.
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Her grief was evident at the time.
She said something about Biggie being the only man who ever loved her.
That's how she felt.
To end on a positive note.
Kim and Faith are now cool and have since worked together.
Faith said.
As soon as Biggie passed away, there was absolutely nothing left to beef about with the other
women, she said.
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Mary J. Blige, who was with Kim at the funeral, totally ignored her, though, as if she had
done something wrong when she was the wife.
But that was a long time ago, so I'm sure it's not like that now.
Faith and Kim collaborated for one of Biggie's posthumous albums.
The King and I and Faith has remained close to Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace.
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She's helped her to keep Biggie's legacy alive.
Faith also supported Voletta during the various court cases when she took the LAPD to court,
seeking answers to what happened to her son.
And Biggie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and that was a huge milestone
in his legacy.
Faith and Kim have done interviews together and have not had any altercations since.
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Kim was an incredible emcee.
Hello.
She had to be her mentor and collaborator the notorious big was one of the greatest
emcees ever, if not the greatest.
Kim's enormous skill belied her diminutive stature.
She matched his wit and earned her respect.
She went toe to toe with him.
Sometimes she went toe to toe with me.
Hello!
ha ha ha ha ha ha.
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Word up Kim!
And Faith said she has no regrets about her marriage to Biggie, she acknowledged that
he was only 21 at the time.
Had a lot of money for the first time in his life and fame, and I guess he lacked the maturity
to be what he needed to be as a husband.
When asked about their break up, Biggie said that he would always love faith and had hoped
that they would get back together within ten years or so.
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Sadly, that opportunity never came.
So don't take people for granted.
You may not get the opportunity to show them how much you love them.
And as Kim is now a mother to a beautiful daughter who has many of her old features,
I hope she has been able to overcome her insecurities for the most part and is able to set a good
example.
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