Single Stories: Faith Evans, “Love Like This”

20 years ago this week, Faith Evans released the first single from her sophomore album, KEEP THE FAITH.

Although it was written by the quintet of Evans, Sean “Puffy” Combs, Schon Crawford, Clarence Emery, and Ron “Amen-Ra” Lawrence, “Love Like This” also owes a great deal to Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers, since the entire song is built around a sample from “Chic Cheer,” by the band Chic. As the first single from KEEP THE FAITH, an album which took Evans two years to complete, there was a great deal riding on “Love Like This,” both for Evans and for her label.

Although Evans’ fans might not have been thrilled how long they had to wait for the results, they certainly seemed to like both “Love Like This” and the album from whence it came: the single climbed to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it her highest-charting hit up to that point, and the album hit #6 on the Billboard 200 and made it all the way to #3 on the R&B / Hip-Hop Albums chart.