Eve and Missy Elliott: Taking RAP To A New Level

Ebony, August, 2001 by Kevin Chappell

Troy Carter, Eve's manager, says Eve has been so successful because, "She's like that cool girl who lives down the street from you. The one you can talk to, relate to, but at the same time, she has that cuteness and sexiness about her. She can either hang with the dogs or hang with the girls. It's something that's natural," he says. "A lot of female artists who have come out have been fabricated. They have men writing for them, men who are producing for them. She thinks for herself. She's speaking for the 22-year-old woman.

Both keep their romantic relationships with men low key. Eve was once dating music producer Stevie J., but offered a "no comment" when asked about the status of their relationship now. Missy, on the other hand, says while she "needs a man" she doesn't have the time for a relationship right now.

Missy and Eve both take pride in their public image, and work hard to keep it positive, always thinking about how they can improve on the way their fans perceive them. Missy, for instance, is working to show her fans that she is not all about business and making money, that she also has a fun, kid-at-heart side, a side that loves to go to amusement parks, laugh and joke. Eve, on the other band, hopes to disprove the notion that she's all about high-fashion and big spending, and that her short stint as a stripper is something in her past that's not worth even discussing now. "I stripped; so what!" she says. "I'm doing better for myself now, and that's all that matters."

While the two say they can be hard at times, as evidenced by the parental-warning labels on each of their CDs, both say they are mostly soft ladies who like the same things most women like. "I'm very soft, very sweet, but when you cross me wrong, you see a whole other side. That's the b---- side," Missy says. "Other than that, I'm very sweet. The majority of the time, I'm stuffing, laughing, in a good mood."

"I'm both tough and soft," says Eve, whose real name is Eve Jihan Jeffers and who says her toughness comes from her mother. "It depends on the situation, people, events. I'm sensitive only around certain people. Only certain people have seen me cry. I'm usually tough when I'm out of my immediate circle."

Eve started rapping when she was 12 and stuck with it "because of the attention that it got me from people looking at me, watching me, wanting to know what I had to say," she says. "When I started rapping, I liked the attention. I didn't know about all of this."

She first dyed her hair blond when she was 14 and kept it that way for seven years before dying it the bright red that it is today. Eve got her first tattoo--the paw prints on her chest--from a guy named Eddie when she was 18. "It's one of my favorite things," she says. She now has three tattoos and plans to get more.

Eve says she didn't like high school, and was sure she wouldn't like college. "Music was what I really wanted to do," says Eve, who now lives in New Jersey. "I told myself if I didn't get a deal before I was 20, I was going to quit rapping. I got a deal when I was 19. So I think it was meant to be."