Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	(72/100)
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Entertainment Weekly	B+
The Guardian
musicOMH
Paste	(8/10)
PopMatters
Rolling Stone
Slant
Uncut
USA Today

The First Lady is the fourth studio album by American recording artist Faith Evans. Released by Capitol Records, it marked Evans' debut on the EMI subsidiary, following her departure from Bad Boy Records in 2003. Despite this, the singer reunited with much of her frequent contributors to work on the album, including The Neptunes, Chucky Thompson, and Mario Winans. Duo Carvin & Ivan of Karma Productions wrote and produced the predominant part of all songs that were included in the final track listing.

Generally well received by critics, The First Lady debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number one on the U.S. Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums with opening week sales of 157,000 units. It remains Evans' highest ranking album on either chart, and the best first week sales of her career. By the end of 2005, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, denoting shipments exceeding 500,000 in the United States alone. In support of the album, Evans embarked on a concert tour, The First Lady Tour, in the United States and Europe in mid-2005. In 2006, it was nominated for Best Female R&B/Soul Album at the 20th Soul Train Music Awards.

The title of the album was inspired by Evans' original nickname with Bad Boy Records, "The First Lady of Bad Boy." On her decision to use a truncated version of the name Diddy dubbed her with, Evans commented: "[The nickname] did carry over, 'cause I'm the first artist in my genre at Capitol," she said. "More so, I chose the title The First Lady because a lot of my personality reminds me of people like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Hillary Clinton. [...] Of course, they go through things, 'cause they're human like all of us. But when you see the first lady, you regard her [as] being the first lady. [...] I've made it my business to try and handle certain turbulence in my life with a certain dignity and [remain] ladylike."

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Wikipedia