Few chapters of the East Coast-West Coast feud are as buried in rumour as this one. So we keep three things apart here: what is documented, what Tupac claimed, and what Faith Evans says about it.
Who she is
Faith Evans, born in Florida in 1973 and raised in New Jersey, was the first female artist signed to Sean Combs’s label Bad Boy Records. On August 4, 1994, she married the rapper Christopher Wallace, The Notorious B.I.G. The marriage was turbulent; by 1996 the couple were living apart.
What is documented
In October 1995, shortly after Tupac got out of prison and signed with Death Row, the two met in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Philips, who was interviewing Tupac in those days, later recalled seeing Faith in the studio, where she was recording vocals for the song Wonda Why They Call U Bitch. In February 1996 VIBE reported that Tupac’s new double album, All Eyez on Me, included a track featuring Faith.
In the same VIBE piece, a source described Tupac and Faith as “very, very close.” Tupac himself only said: “Me and Faith don’t have no problems.” Asked about anything beyond the studio, he declined: “I don’t kiss and tell.”
What Tupac claimed
In June 1996 came Hit ‘Em Up, the B-side of the single How Do U Want It and one of the harshest diss tracks in rap history. In the very first line Tupac claimed he had slept with Biggie’s wife; in all, the claim comes up three times in the song. His target was Biggie, whom he held partly responsible for the 1994 attack on him in New York, something Biggie always denied.
According to accounts of the song’s reception, Biggie responded with restraint: he didn’t know whether anything had happened at all, and even if it had, it didn’t belong in a song. On Brooklyn’s Finest with Jay-Z he alluded to the rumour with a pun about “two Pacs.”
What Faith Evans says
Faith Evans has always denied an affair. According to journalist Cathy Scott, shortly after Hit ‘Em Up she said on the radio that she had spent time with Tupac but had no sexual relationship with him. The Guardian noted in 2005 that she still rejects the claim. In 2008 she told her life story in her own words in the memoir Keep the Faith.
There is no evidence for Tupac’s claim. What remains is one line from a diss track against the word of the person concerned.
After the murders
Tupac died in September 1996, Biggie in March 1997, both killed in drive-by shootings. In a letter from the Shakur family, written in prison by Tupac’s stepfather Mutulu Shakur and published in 2004, the Shakurs explicitly extended their sympathies to “Sister Faith” as well, and warned against carrying the feud any further.
Rumours and evidence
The alleged affair is often presented as fact, with the claim that Tupac had told VIBE about it. That is wrong: in VIBE he refused to say anything, and the claim first appeared in Hit ‘Em Up. A supposedly verbatim, crude remark Tupac made to Biggie at the Grammys in February 1996 is also unsourced.