Eve is widely regarded as one of the trailblazing female rappers in hip-hop. She shot to stardom when the hip-hop industry was heavily male-dominated. Despite finding herself in that situation, the Philadelphia native and Grammy winner did not let that deter her from staking a claim in the rap industry.
But before she shot into the limelight, the Gangsta Lovin’ rapper revealed she worked as a dancer at a Bronx strip club when she was 17. Eve, 45, touched on that period of her life in her upcoming memoir Who’s That Girl?, and PEOPLE excerpted portions of the book.
The rapper, who also had a retail job, stated that she took up the two jobs because her rap career was stalling at the time. “In my head, I was thinking, ‘I need to be grown now, and it’s the quickest way I can get out of the house,’” she told the news outlet. “But I was so bad at it. I was lazy.”
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Eve ultimately met rapper Ma$e while she was dancing at the strip club, and she said the 49-year-old encouraged her to rather channel her energy toward rapping. She eventually quit the stripping job after two months.
“When MA$E became a pastor, I was like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense,’” she revealed. “He was my prophet that day. I needed that extra push.”
Eve started rapping in her teens and even engaged in rap cypher battles with her male classmates in high school. That was the period she decided to become a musician. She ultimately got a shot at stardom after veteran rapper, producer, and music executive Dr. Dre signed her to his Aftermath label. But she was dropped after eight months.
“I think it was a huge blessing in disguise,” she said. “I needed to be humbled. I think a lot of the reason why I got dropped by Dre is that I was so, ‘When is it my turn? When are you going to put me on?’ So extra Philly feisty. I needed to be sent back home to be like, ‘OK, well, if you got this opportunity again, who do you want to be? What do you want to show the world?'”
Eve eventually got another shot – this time with the Ruff Ryders, the New York-based rap crew that had a roster of rappers including DMX and The Lox. But before she became a member of the group, she had to audition and battle all the male rappers in the room, PEOPLE reported.
“I was like, ‘OK, this is a ride or die situation. I’m rapping for my life right now,’” she recalled. “I had to kill them all, lyrically.”
Her lyrical prowess caught the label’s eye, and she was eventually signed – paving the way for the release of her 1999 debut album, Let There Be Eve…Ruff Ryders’ First Lady. She also wrote her name in the history books after the album peaked at number one on the Billboard 200. This made her the third female rapper to attain that feat.
Despite that achievement, Eve revealed it felt lonely. “I thought it was a sisterhood, and as soon as you get signed, everybody’s like, ‘Hey, Barbie!’” she said. “It was not like that. I remember feeling like, ‘Damn, this is freaking lonely, man.’”
Eve went ahead to release other albums including Scorpion (2001), Eve-Olution (2002), and Lip Lock (2013).
