Eve: As a rapper, she proved herself as the pit bull in a skirt among an all-male crew. Will she make tails wag as a budding actress and fashion mogul?

Dimitri Ehrlich

Eve never sits still for long. Music- and image-wise, she's always on the move. Alternately coy and thugged-out, she first made a mark in rap in 1999 as the only woman in the Ruff Ryders crew. But while she added a sizzling female presence, she stood out from other hyper-sexualized lady MCs of the era by describing herself as "a pit bull in a skirt." As she moves into acting, with a role opposite Vin Diesel in last month's XXX, and emerges with her own clothing line, Eve now has more outlets than ever in which to explore her constantly shifting persona. Her third album, Eve-olution (Ruff Ryders/Interscope), released this month, is aptly titled: She has steadily evolved from the gritty street boasts of her debut to last year's more musical, Grammy-winning collaboration with Gwen Stefani, "Let Me Blow Ya Mind," to the overtly pretty, laid-back, romantic flow of "Gangsta Lovin'," her new duet with Alicia Keys. With so much in flux about Eve, one thing is certain: Darwin probably never envisioned anything quite l ike her.

EVE: How's your love life? I remember last time we met, I was giving you all kinds of advice. Did I give good advice or fucked-up advice?

DIMITRI EHRLICH: Fine. We broke up, but thank you for remembering.

E: Oh, shit. [laughs]

DE: I know you broke up with [former boyfriend and P. Diddy producer] Stevie J. Beyond that, how's your love life?

E: I have a "like" life. I like everybody. Shit happens. When I see him I'm not like, "Damn." We speak. We're still friends.

DE: I hear you just took a little vacation and jumped off a cliff and went parasailing, despite being afraid of heights and the ocean. That's pretty daring.

E: I jumped off a 45-foot cliff into the water--that was a week and half ago, and my chest has just stopped hurting. I also went parasailing and in the air I began to feel very nauseous and hot and sweaty, so I was screaming, "Please reel us back in!" They couldn't hear me, but they got me in just in time, because we were going over boats and I would have puked on somebody's head.

DE: Now that vacation time is over, I know you're working like crazy. First order of business: Your new record. Eve-olution. What were you striving for on this album?

E: Well, first of all, this album is happier. You can hear I'm happy, and I want the whole world to know. [laughs] But it's not bubblegum. It's still rap lyrics. It's still hard. I have more singing hooks than I've ever had, just because it's more musical. As far as my look goes, I have to change my look or I'll get bored. It's exciting for me to say to my hairdresser, "All right, let's try something new. What look are we going for?" I had three photo shoots this week already. I had a TV show to do. Everything I did, I had different looks. don't want anyone to lock me into something.

DE: What did you learn about yourself from acting in XXX and Barbershop?

E: I learned that I can stick with it. Vin Diesel told me, "Never stop." Go with your fuck-ups. On the video set I can be like, "Yo, I need a break," if I want to. I control everything. On a movie set, it's like, "We're going to be working for 12 hours, and I don't care if you have a headache. Need some aspirin?" I didn't complain as much as I usually do. I usually complain about everything.

DE: Why did you choose these two projects?

E: With XXX, they called me. It was one of those right time, right place situations. Plus, it was a big budget, and they anticipate it being the biggest film of the summer. It was a good move for me. It was a small role, but substantial enough for people to be like, "Damn! I remember Eve in that." In Barbershop, though, I loved Tern, the character I played. I related to her. I understood her. Now that I have acted, I look at characters differently than I used to. With Tern, I was like, "Damn! I'm her." She's the only girl barber in the whole barbershop, and I'm the only girl in Ruff Ryders, around dudes all the time. She had a boyfriend who cheated on her, who she kept taking back. She was really a tough girl, but that was her only vulnerability, and I've been in that situation, too. She loved the guys that she worked with. She had attitude, but she loved them. She kept them off her, and I just related to that.

DE: Is it a relief for you to step out of the Eve persona when you're acting?

E: No, I wouldn't call it a relief. The entertainer Eve and Eve Jeffers are not so different, but they are two different people. But I like being able to become other people. That keeps it interesting and exciting, because it's not music all the time. You can get bored when you do the same thing all the time.

DE: It feels like you are about to blow up even bigger with the films and the new album. I was wondering just how much at odds this experience is with your pre-fame days. There's a story that's going around that you grew up in this real ghetto situation. and then you were a stripper. Let's set the record straight: How rough was it really in west Philly when you were a kid? Isn't it true you only stripped for a few weeks?

E: Well, that stripper thing, first and foremost I put it out there years ago. Yes, it is a part of my past. I put it out there so that, at this point in my life, nobody could go to the media and try to get big off me having been a stripper.

DE: So nobody could pull a Gennifer Flowers on you.

E: Exactly! "The former stripper turns..." Please! I wasn't a stripper for 15 years. I stripped for like a month and a half. I did it because it was rebellious for me to do it. I'm from the projects--that's where I was born. That's where I grew up. Then my mother got married when I was 14 years old, and we moved to a middle-class area. I started stripping when I was 17, as a way for me to find my independence, to make some quick money so that I could move out of my mother's house.

DE: So, it was more like a lark?

E: Please! It was an awakening. I was there and it helped me sort out some things. I realized, "You know what? This is not what I need to be doing with my life." Then I started pursuing my music even harder.

DE: What are some other myths about you that piss you off?

E: That I'm gay. I've heard that a million times. I have no problem with it, but that's not my thing. I am not gay and I've never been gay. I love men to death--and I'm single, men! Another myth is that I'm a bitch, which I can be at times, but usually I'm not, and not to people on the street. People that don't know me don't get my bitchy side unless they do something to me. They're the only bad things I've heard. Have you heard anything else?

DE: I feel like one myth is your creation: the whole "pit bull in a skirt" idea. Having met you a few times, you're really funny and warm. Is there really a pit bull inside you?

E: Believe me, there's a pit bull inside. She comes out when she needs to. What's so funny is that I have two Yorkies.

DE: A Yorkie in a skirt!

E: But again, me being a pit bull in a skirt is another thing that people blew out of proportion. It was a rhyme in a song. It was a line that took on a life of its own. I'm with Ruff Ryders; they're my dogs.

DE: Another thing people might say is, "Oh, she grew up poor. Maybe she's become a workaholic now and is making hit records and starting a clothing line and doing movies to compensate." But you told me once that you're incredibly lazy and if you're not working you'll be sitting at home eating Froot Loops in your pajamas, watching television all day.

E: Well, I wouldn't say I grew up poor. I grew up broke a lot of times. Poor and broke are two different things. My mother was a single mother. My grandmother, grandfather, aunt, my little cousin, my uncles and us all lived in the same house. I think me being poor is a myth. Me being lazy is a reality. I can be a procrastinator. I have those qualities. I enjoy working, but at the same time there are days when I just stop and stay home and lay in bed all day, because sometimes you just need to cut the phones off and have people out of your face. I work extra hard because I've been broke. I don't want to be broke again, ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. I've never been a workaholic before. I don't think I've realized until now how important it is to be on top of your business.

DE: I want to ask you about your relationship with Dr. Dre. He was the guy who discovered you when you went out to L.A. in 1997, and then he dropped you from his label, Aftermath, eight months later. But he wound up producing a few songs on your last two albums. I read that you guys fought in the studio. What's your relationship with him like now?

E: We did fight in the (continued from page 196) studio. [laughs] But it was all good because we made a hit record! It was all creative juices flowing. I'm a spoiled brat and so is Dre. I shouldn't say spoiled brat--he's a perfectionist. He knows what he wants. He brings out the best in me, in all honesty. I hate having people tell me what to do, and he's that type of person, because he knows what he wants. He's like, "Yo, do it this way," or "Do it that way," which makes it better, but still I don't care. Don't tell me what to do!

DE: Dre, if you are reading this: Use some reverse psychology on Eve.

E: Exactly. So we had a little argument, but by the end of the song he came up to me and we talked and it was all good. I love working with Dre, definitely. It's all love.

DE: What was going on inside your head as you were coming up from the Philly rap scene to where you are today?

E: I had been rhyming for a long time. I finally got out of high school, running around, still doing my thing, and I got a phone call from some guys I knew, saying, "Yo, we got the president of [Dre's label] Aftermath in town, do you want to audition?" I'm like, "Yeah, all right. Whatever." I had been to a million auditions. It was like, "This couldn't hurt." When I auditioned for the guy, he said, "OK, stop. Stop the tape." And I'm like, "Oh, I must be whack." He's like, "Nahl I'm calling Dre right now." Two days later, they flew me to L.A. I did a demo for Ore; I was there for eight months working on the album.

It didn't work out between me and Ore, but while was there I met DMX and I started hanging with him and the Ruff Ryder kids. And then I got the phone call like, "Yo, we're dropping you. You're going back home."

DE: Why did they decide that?

E: They never would tell me, and I never got to talk to Ore about it, and to this day we have never brought it up. It's all good because I'm where I am now. And he's where he is. I still would like to know, though. [both laugh]

DE: Dre, if you are still reading this, please send a two-way pager message to Eve and tell her why you dropped her.

E: [laughs] No, no, no, no. It's all good. But I would like to know. My mother told me, "It's probably a blessing in disguise. Something better will come."

DE: But then you lay in bed, depressed for several weeks.

E: I walked around my mom's house in pajamas for a whole month. I don't think I even wanted to go outside or anything, but my mom was just like, "Hear me when I tell you it's going to be all good." Then I got the phone call to sign with the Ruff Ryders. And I'm like, "Aw, that's crazy!"

DE: If that audition with the Huff Ryders had failed, would you have become a makeup artist? I know you have a thing for makeup.

E: I would have definitely kept on trying, but after a while I would have just been like, "All right," I love makeup, too. It wasn't a passion like my music, but I really wanted to get into it and up to this day it's still a hobby to me. I love it, and I would love to take classes for it. I probably would be a makeup artist now.

DE: How do you remain so earthy about this very glamorous hip-hop scene, which is a lot of bling-bling?

E: I don't surround myself in it. I live it, but I don't sleep, eat and breathe it. I cut it off. When I go to my hotel room, I don't watch videos. I don't listen to radio. I'm a regular person with a ban-gin' job. I've got a beautiful job. I'm blessed. I'm doing what I want to do, but so what? I don't let it overtake everything.

DE: When you first started selling records, were you irresponsible and extravagant with your money, or were you always sane?

E: Honestly, no. I did stupid shit, took friends shopping--but nothing too crazy. With my first really big checks, I made sure I gave family members some money and then I bought my house and my car. I think the first big thing I ever bought was a fur. I always wanted a mink, so I bought a mink. After that, I did responsible things.

DE: How does it feel to be the first woman in your family to ever own her own home?

E: It's a beautiful feeling. It's unexplainable.

DE: Do you want to have children someday?

E: I want as many as God's gonna give me. I don't want my tubes tied, none of that shit. But also, I want to do it right. Of course, I want the marriage, but if it doesn't happen that way, children are a blessing and one of these days, I can't wait.

DE: Me, too. I'll marry you, if you want to. [both laugh]

E: Let's have babies! What are you doing next week at seven o'clock?

DE: I'm there! OK, one last question. Many people may not know that your mother still refers to you by your childhood nickname. Miss Poo-a-doo. Could you explain?

E: Oh, God! Who told you that shit?

DE: I'm not telling, Miss Poo-a-doo. Where does that come from?

E: That's so funny. [both laugh] My mom will call me and she's like, "Poo-a-doo." That was from when I was a baby--I'm still her baby. That keeps me regular, too. My mom's not like, "Eve, what's up?" She's like, "You know, that's my baby. I don't care about none of that shit. You my child." I love that. Oh! But I hate you for that!

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