But all drama is dispelled when the barefoot rapper casually adjusts her stretch jeans and plunks down on the couch. “I gotta dye my hair like twice a month,” says Eve Jihan Jeffers, crimson liquid running down her temple, hairdresser hovering behind her with a dye bottle and sponge. “If people could see the preparation behind the scenes, they would be like ‘Yo, she must love her fans’.”
She does love all 2 million who bought her 1999 debut, “Let There Be Eve: Ruff Ryder’s First Lady,” and hopes to love millions more when her new album, “Scorpion,” hits the stores this week. The only female member of the Ruff Ryders, a New York-based label and collective of producers and rappers such as Swizz Beatz and DMX, she is also hip-hop’s most respected female presence. Eve’s made a name for herself with razor-sharp rapping rather than T&A-filled videos: playing as tough as the boys, but with a stealthy female elegance. She walks the fine line between the empowering, old-school style of Queen Latifah and the trashy titillation of Lil’ Kim. It’s a balance few have been able to strike.
Then again, Eve is no ordinary gal. The self-proclaimed “pit bull in a skirt” is a mix of moneyed class and gum-cracking street smarts. Her faded jersey is strategically ripped at the collar to expose two tiger-claw tattoos on her chest and a $150,000 diamond choker hanging around her neck (“It’s a borrowed piece”). There’s an equally impressive diamond bracelet around her wrist (“Oh, that? It’s my 21st-birthday gift from the Ruff Ryders”), offset by her black and silver-tipped ghetto-fabulous nails. It’s a contrast that practically maps her trajectory from the Philadelphia projects to Manhattan’s most expensive boutiques. While many of her peers let the clothes wear them, she unites the conflicting styles under one strong, stubborn persona, and makes it all her own.
This self-assurance means Eve can take shots at other rappers on “Scorpion” and still not sound hypocritical (one example: “Some of you ain’t writing too well. Too concerned with fashion?”). Music is her first love, and the rest is gravy. On this project, she wrestled for more creative control inside the Ruff Ryder camp and got it. As a result, this record is more diverse than her debut–the formerly hard-nosed rapper now sings (and actually harmonizes) atop far-flung sounds: Latin horns here, reggae melodies there. The kick-your-ass swagger and party numbers that drove her debut still dominate, but a more complex musical backdrop and plausible, honest lyrics about everything from the hurtful deception felt at the hands of former friends to her disgust toward a weak boyfriend add needed substance. A host of guests–producer deluxe Dr. Dre (a big deal considering he once dropped a young Eve from his label), rock goddess Gwen Stefani, The Lox, Teena Marie, DMX and brothers Damian and Stephen Marley–also help mix things up.
“I think it’s a good balance of the hard core from the first album and the artist I wanna become as I get older,” says the 23-year-old, who had just used the formerly white sink to have the dye washed out of her hair. “Before, the lyrics were mine, but the vision was pretty much theirs [the Ruff Ryder camp’s]. Like there was a song about a heist that was totally the guys’ idea. After that, I promised myself I would never make a song about shooting, robbing, anything like that, ‘cause it’s not me.”
Unlike many rappers, Eve does not claim to have come from a life of crime before making it big. Instead, she worked the local Philadelphia talent-show circuit with her singing group Dope Girl Posse, then switched over to rapping at the age of 13 because “she got more attention doing that as a girl than singing.” She was offered a record deal by Dr. Dre’s Aftermath label, which moved her to L.A. when she was 18, but she was back in Phil-ly a year later, with no record (“He did just not know what to do with me,” says Eve). But Dre’s parent label, Interscope, told the Ruff Ryder camp all about Eve, and in 1997 they picked her up and began a strict program of artist development. “They made me write and recite, write and recite,” recalls Eve, who finally picks up her beeping pager, reads it, then whispers “Leave me alone” and rolls her eyes. “It was like boot camp. You had to prove yourself to them, and that’s what made me a better MC.”
The doorbell rings, and a stream of hotel staffers carry in garment bag after bag filled with clothes by top designers. It’s a procession fit for a queen, but the Ruff Ryder isn’t ready to look down on her subjects from the throne just yet. “When you meet Eve,” she says, the First Lady munching on a french fry, “you meet the rapper, and you meet the person. It’s that simple.”
