Faith Evans

One of the more underreported happenings of summer 1995 took place on a humid June night at Nell's, a club located just blocks from NYU and Manhattan's Union Square. It was a new artist showcase for Faith Evans, the singer then known simply by her first name. By 1995 many of the city's venues had shut their doors to "black" events, and Nell's was not much of an exception. In the minds of club owners, Hip Hop in particular carried with it a lot of bad juju. Citing increased costs for insurance, bouncers, and metal detectors necessary to keep things under control, these landlords and event throwers were more interested in R&B (read: "safe"), or simply going white in terms of who they let in the door. Yet on this night Nell's had opened its doors to host an intimate performance by Mrs. Notorious B.I.G., the latest addition to the Bad Boy roster and the label's first foray into gospel-rooted soul music. Few in attendance inside the packed space knew that this platinum blonde had written Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up," among other '90s R&B radio hits. And so, not surprisingly, expectations at Faith's coming out party were low, the crowd believing that she was a Bad Boy artist only because Sean "Puffy" Combs was doing her husband a solid. Which may explain why, the crowd caught wind that there was free champagne and a DJ downstairs, they migrated. In the basement Black Moon, Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, Mary J. Blige, and, of course, every hit artist that had come out of the Bad Boy camp had the room in a frenzy. It wasn't long before the dance floor became too confining and men in baggy jeans, white tank tops, and Timberlands grabbed the exposed pipes overhead and started doing pull-ups. The crowd cheered. And then the water came. Great gushes rained down on permed, Afro'd, braided, and faded heads, and soon there was nowhere to run but up. Faith and her audience joined the exodus, and the party flowed onto the sidewalks just as the fire trucks arrived. The night and pretty much any chance of Hip Hop ever being welcomed at Nell's again was over.