The First Lady of the Ruff Ryders wasn’t elected, appointed or married into her position.
Eve Jihan Jeffers battle-rapped her way in, then became a household name over and over again, all by herself.
Though Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim had come before her as Alpha Women of Rap Crews, Eve struck a different tone with the public by association alone. The Ruff Ryders felt like equal parts rap supergroup and motorcycle crew, so their clout tied to a bigger part of the culture, and one that had gone unrepresented for a long time. Of course, Eve’s lighter skin made her unique in the public eye too. She was “exotic” and the paw prints tattooed on her chest only played into that perception.
But Eve was also undeniably talented. And she removed any doubt of that when her first solo album made her the third female rapper to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 (behind Lauryn Hill and Foxy Brown). So when her second solo album “Scorpion” dropped, no one would have faulted a sophomore slump.
She delivered the polar opposite. “Scorpion” became the defining album of Eve’s career, and even shaped music itself, forcing the Grammy-awarding Recording Academy to create a new category—Best Rap/Sung Collaboration—for her “Let Me Blow Your Mind” duet with Gwen Stefani.
However, the album’s lead single set the stage for all that success, asking and answering the question we all wanted to know about the most gorgeous member of the Ruff Ryders—“who’s that girl?”
It felt like we learned more about Eve’s personality, style and swag in this 4 minutes than we’d ever known. But unless you’ve looked closely, you might not have noticed that Eve writes ALL of her own material. So everything you know about her is all care of the lady herself, including that she’s dripping talent.
Since the 2001 release of “Scorpion,” Eve’s appeared in multiple feature-length films and television shows, including a stint hosting The Talk, and lent her voice to a video game, becoming so prolific in the visual category that it’s genuinely hard to say whether her filmography or her discography is longer.
So who’s that girl? You know her name.