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If there was one woman you looked up to coming of age as a young Black girl in the 2000s, it was Eve. With divine bone structure, a powerful short blonde haircut, and bars for days, Eve was like the beautiful, tough older sister we all wish we had.
She dropped her debut album, Let There Be Eve...Ruff Ryders' First Lady, in 1999. It charted number one on the Billboard 200, making the Philly native the third female rapper to achieve the accolade. What followed was a career that places Eve as an undeniable icon in the rap game. “Who’s That Girl,” the first single from her 2001 album, Scorpion, was listed number 97 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip-Hop; in that same year she won the BET award for best female hip-hop artist. Eve also took home a Grammy in 2002 for her song featuring Gwen Stefani, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind,” for best rap/sung collaboration.
But Eve didn’t just stop at music. After starring in hits like Barbershop and appearing in other movies like Charlie’s Angels, she dropped her namesake comedy sitcom, Eve, on UPN. In 2014, Eve became a cohost on talk show The Talk and just last year received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination along with her Talk costars.
Now married with four stepchildren, Eve is living in the U.K. and still doing what she does best: living her life to the fullest. The rap queen returned to the screen on October 19 in Queens, a new ABC series starring Eve, Naturi Naughton, Brandy, and Nadine Velazquez as former girl group members trying to recapture the height of their glory days.
And 20 years after the release of Scorpion, Eve spoke with Glamour about some of her most memorable rap moments. For the latest edition of 5 Songs, 5 Stories, the rapper talks about how some of her favorite songs came to be.
“Let Me Blow Ya Mind” featuring Gwen Stefani
Considered one of the most successful rap/pop collaborations of all time, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” propelled Eve into an entirely new musical orbit. Her lyrics tackle what it means to be mainstream and the longevity of her rap career. Eve took home a Grammy for the song, and the music video won an MTV Video Award.
It's the one song that I wrote fully—like, literally every single thing, every word. I write my own stuff, but usually I get lazy after I write verses. I don't want to write the chords, and Dre was like, “You're not leaving the studio until this song is done.” I hated him that day, but I'm so happy he made me stay.
The other thing with the song is that not only did Dre do the beat, I got a Philly native, Scott Stauch, who I've known since I was 15 years old, on the keys and then Gwen Stefani, who I was a huge fan of because of No Doubt. And I got told that that was never going to work. I got told that that song would not work, that people would be like, “Why are these two chicks together?” I was like, “Look, let's try it. If it sucks, no one ever has to hear it.” But of course it didn't. I knew it wouldn't. Thank God. And you know, I won a Grammy. That was my first Grammy.
“Love Is Blind” featuring Faith Evans
“Love Is Blind” came out in 2000 and became an anthem for people experiencing intimate-partner violence. In the song Eve laments the abusive relationship between her friend and an unnamed man, whom Eve exacts revenge upon at the end of the song.
“Love Is Blind” is one that I wrote as a poem, when I was 16. I actually had a best friend at the time who was 17 and was dating this older man who would beat her. And then she got pregnant, and it was, like, really crazy. I didn't know what that song would turn into until one day I was in the studio. When I heard the beat, I was like, “This is perfect.”
The last verse of that song is more dramatized, because, obviously, there are people unfortunately who die from domestic violence every day. That whole sentiment of that song was based off the fact that I had a best friend who was pregnant for this man that would beat her. I just was like, “How is this even possible?”
I never knew the impact the video for the song would have once it came out. Many people came up to me and would say, “Thank you for this,” or, “I'm going through this,” or, “I know someone that's going through this.” I didn't know outside of my little bubble of life how bad domestic abuse was everywhere until I put out that song.
“Who’s That Girl?”
If there’s one song from Eve’s catalog that’ll make you feel like the baddest on the planet, it’s “Who’s That Girl.” Working on the music video for the track launched Eve’s foray into fashion, proceeding her UPN show, Eve, where she played a fashion designer.
What I love about “Who's That Girl” is that it was when I was starting to “cross over,” in a way. We wanted to make sure, especially being what Ruff Ryders was, that we put the Harlem Shake in the video. Because we wanted to keep it authentic to who we were as a crew.
It was nice to be able to showcase these neighborhood dudes who, this is their culture, this is what they do. I'm not from New York, but New York is my second home. It was the first time I started venturing also into fashion, for real fashion. That video was really a fun video to do.
“Satisfaction”
Eve almost took home another Grammy for this 2002 song, which was in part an homage to Eve’s hometown, Philadelphia. The bouncy, funk-driven track quickly became a summer anthem and charted 27 on the Billboard Hot 100.
This song was another Dre beat. What I love about that song is Philly all day. I got to do the music video in Philadelphia.
I feel like out of all my songs I've ever made, “Satisfaction” is Philly chick all day. And that was another song where Dre was like, “Yeah, you're not leaving the studio until you finish this song.” I'm happy he did. That's the one thing about Dre. He pushed the shit out of me, always. And thank God that he did.
“Tambourine”
If you were of age when “Tambourine” came out in 2007, chances are you heard it play every time you stepped into a club. The infectious beat made the track an instant hit, and it’s been used everywhere, from television shows like Gossip Girl and Skins to movies like Fantastic Four and Bride Wars.
I remember that day in the studio. Swizz Beats was like, “I got this beat.” I heard the hook. We was in this big giant studio, and we just started because Swizz is a big ball of energy. He’s like, “Yo, you see it? You feel it? You hear it?” I'm like, “Yeah, I got it, I got it.”
We wrote that song in literally 30 minutes. And then to do that video with Melina [Matsoukas]! I knew what I wanted. It was one of the first videos that I was really like, “I need the colors to look like this, and I need the feeling to be like this.” She was so dope and so collaborative. To work with a female director as well was the best, best thing ever. “Tambourine,” I have to say, was one of those songs where the label was kind of just like, “We don't know where to put it.” Because it's not urban to them, they said, “Oh, it's not urban; it's a crossover.” But it wasn't. It literally went where it went and it blew up. I was so happy because I was like, “I don't know if this song is going to do anything.” Thank God it did.
Arielle Gray is a multimedia journalist based in Boston.
