Rapper Eve has revealed that, before she was a platinum-selling hip-hop artist, actor, and celebrated talk show host, she worked as a teenage stripper.
Fortunately, within two months, she was spotted by the rapper Ma$e, who had just signed to Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ label – at the time he was known as Puff Daddy – and her music career took off.
Diddy was arrested in New York this week on a string of sex charges. However, Eve refused to comment on the case, which centers on claims the disgraced star forced women into ‘freak off’ orgies.
‘I knew who Puff Daddy was,’ she writes in her new memoir, Who’s That Girl?, ‘but his new artist he’d just signed? Nope.
‘One of the older girls came up to me and said, “You need to go dance for Ma$e. You’re around his age.” Ugh fine.’
Eve made her name with hits including Let Me Blow Ya Mind with Gwen Stefani (above) and Gangsta Lovin’ with Alicia Keys
She only lasted two months as a stripper. ‘Everything I experienced made me feel guilty’
Eve admits she was such a lazy stripper, she was always trying to get the other girls to step in for her. She even managed to persuade some clients to let her rap for them rather than give them a lap dance.
‘I’m standing topless in front of some middle-aged man, smiling with his legs spread, like he’s ready for me to hop on and start grinding him,’ writes the now 45-year-old.
‘I’m already over it, but I sit down and swing my legs around him… reluctantly.’
She then describes how the man mumbled in her ear what he’d like to do to her, before she whispered back her own proposition – one he probably wasn’t expecting.
‘Let me rap for you,’ she offered – adding that if he didn’t like it, she’d give him a lap dance for free.
The ploy worked and, as a 17-year-old escaping a crowded home and a stepfather she didn’t get along with, she was soon making more money than she’d ever seen.
‘I hop off that potential hell ride triumphantly, knowing that I just rapped for this man with my t***ies out. And he’s still tipping me when I didn’t even give him a lap dance,’ she writes
So, rather than dance for Ma$e that night, he asked to hear her rap. He was suitably impressed, and asked her to come with him to the studio.
‘I knew he was famous, but I most definitely wasn’t going to be some murder headline on the news,’ she writes, ‘so I said to him… “I have to take my friends with me.”
‘It was like four chicks – we all danced together at the club. Since the night was slow, they all left too to come with me.
‘We spent the night playing beats and driving through the city, rapping in his car. It was the lyrical exercise that I needed in my life, and it was the most fun I’d had in New York City since I started dancing there.
‘At one point he even stopped at Puffy’s house to pick up some money, and I just knew that I couldn’t go back to my old life.’
‘I honestly didn’t mind walking around naked and dancing by myself,’ she says, ‘but everything else just felt so annoying. I was the laziest stripper’
In 2020, Eve (far right) was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for co-hosting CBS’s The Talk, alongside Sharon Osbourne, Sheryl Underwood and Carrie Ann Inaba
Her debut album Let There Be Eve…. released in 1999, went double platinum, hitting number one on the Billboard 200
Eve – also known as Eve Jihan Jeffers – made her name with hits including Let Me Blow Ya Mind with Gwen Stefani and Gangsta Lovin’ with Alicia Keys.
But she only lasted two months as a stripper.
‘Everything I experienced made me feel guilty,’ she writes. ‘And depressed. I knew I didn’t have to be there… some girls were there to feed their families. They had kids to take care of and a roof over their heads to pay for.
‘I had a mom and a stepdad who weren’t pressurizing me to do anything but maybe further my education after graduating high school.
‘But trying to move out and fund a rap career meant that I needed fast money – apparently half-naked in stilettos.’
None of her family in Philadelphia had a clue what was going on – mainly because she would join a few other dancers a couple of times a week and drive 95 miles away to New York, to perform at the Golden Lady in the Bronx.
‘My mother didn’t know this was going down at all… I somehow managed to keep this new double life of partial nudity tightly buttoned up,’ she writes.
‘I honestly didn’t mind walking around naked and dancing by myself,’ she adds, ‘but everything else just felt so annoying.
‘I was the laziest stripper. I just didn’t want to do stuff. I didn’t want to touch anybody, and I damn sure didn’t want them to touch me.’
She even started hiding from the club owner to avoid doing her turn on the pole.
‘Every dancer had a certain set time when they were supposed to get on the pole and dance,’ she writes. ‘I didn’t want to do that, so I would trade off my times with other dancers.’
Eventually, the novelty wore off – and not before time.
‘Even the customers knew I didn’t belong there. Nobody wants to watch the sad stripper dance.’
‘My mother didn’t know this was going down at all… I somehow managed to keep this new double life of partial nudity tightly buttoned up,’ writes the singer
Her memoir, Who’s That Girl, named after one of her biggest hits, is out this month
The next time she saw Ma$e – at Diddy’s onetime restaurant Justin’s in New York – she was signed to Ruff Ryders and had started recording her debut album, Let There Be Eve… Released in 1999, it went double platinum, hitting number one on the Billboard 200.
Eve was only the third female rapper to achieve that honor – after Lauren Hill and Foxy Brown.
Three more albums followed, before she moved into acting, appearing in TV shows including Jane The Virgin and Empire. In 2020, she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for co-hosting CBS’s The Talk, alongside Sharon Osbourne, Sheryl Underwood and Carrie Ann Inaba.
She even launched her own clothing line, Fetish – and asked Diddy for business advice.
‘I said, “Hey, can I take you out to lunch?” I met him at Cipriani’s, and when we got there I broke out my notebook and my pen and said to him, “I’m starting my own clothing line, and I have some questions about how you started Sean John.”
‘He was in shock. He said, “You really are here, taking me out to lunch, to ask me questions about how I started my clothing line?”
‘I guess no one ever pulled up on Puffy to feed him and ask him business questions.
‘I think it was Puff who gave me the piece of advice that if I was going to launch my line, I had to be as involved in the process as possible.’
But she didn’t want her stripper past to be a guilty little secret that would ‘come back to bite me in my ass down the road.’
So she opened up about it in her first cover story for a magazine, before preparing her mom to finally know the truth.
‘I called her up and said, “Mom, I need you to read this article and then call me so we can talk about it.”
‘After she read it, she called me back. I was surprised she wasn’t mad at me; she understood why I’d done it. She knew I’d wanted to make money and was already suspicious when I was just randomly going back and forth from Philly to New York City.’
Who’s That Girl?: A Memoir by Eve is published by Hanover Square Press