Eve Reflects on Dancing at Strip Club at 17, Says She Quit Because 'I Was Lazy!' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Eve for PEOPLE.Photo:Agata Pospieszynska

Agata Pospieszynska

Before she was a Grammy award-winning artist,Evehad a brief stint working at a strip club.

In her new memoirWho’s That Girl?, excerpted exclusively in this week’s PEOPLE, the rapper, 45, recounts how she took a second job dancing at a strip club in the Bronx when she was a teen, in addition to working a retail job, when her rap dreams didn’t happen as quickly as she’d hoped.

“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,’” Eve tells PEOPLE. “But I was so bad at it. I was lazy.”

She quit dancing after two months, following a chance meeting with the rapper MA$E at the club. He urged her to focus on rapping instead.

“When MA$E became a pastor, I was like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense,’” she says. “He was my prophet that day. I needed that extra push.”

Born Eve Jeffers to Julie, a publishing company supervisor, and Jerry, a chemical plant supervisor, in Philadelphia, Eve started battling male high school classmates in rap cyphers at 14 and knew she wanted to pursue music.

After she quit dancing, she was signed — and then dropped — fromDr. Dre’s label Aftermath in a span of eight months.

Eve in Los Angeles in February 2002.Kevin Winter/Getty

Kevin Winter/Getty

She later found her home with the Yonkers, N.Y.-based rap crew the Ruff Ryders. During her audition, she had to battle every man in the room.

“I was like, ‘OK, this is a ride or die situation. I’m rapping for my life right now,’” she says. “I had to kill them all, lyrically.”

The Ruff Ryders were impressed, and she released her debut albumLet There Be Eve…Ruff Ryders' First Lady, which included hits like “Gotta Man” and “Love Is Blind," with them in 1999. On the day of the album release, she got a call fromJAY-Z. He congratulated her but also warned her not to be too upset because female hip-hop albums don’t sell well.

“I wasn’t mad at him,” Eve says. “If anything, it was just fuel.”

The album ended up going No. 1 on the Billboard 200, making Eve the third female rapper in history to achieve the feat. But it was lonely at the top.

“I thought it was a sisterhood, and as soon as you get signed, everybody’s like, ‘Hey, Barbie!’” she says. “It was not like that. I remember feeling like, ‘Damn, this is freaking lonely, man.’”

Still, Eve pushed forward, and in 2001 she released her massive hit “Who’s That Girl” and her Grammy-winningGwen Stefanicollab “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” She also made her first foray into acting in the 2002 filmBarbershop.

Eve’s Who’s That Girl?.HarperCollins Publishers

HarperCollins Publishers

And while Eve’s fans have dubbed her current chapter a “soft life” — a trend that bucks hustle culture — she’s found peace.

“There’s something to be said about the ‘soft life,'” she says. “It’s what you make of it.”

Who’s That Girl?is out Sept. 17. It’s available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

source: people.com