In her new memoir, rapper Eve says she’s driven by ‘the Philly in me’

Back in 2001, Eve released a single that provided the West Philly rapper with her signature song. It also gave her a ready-made title should she ever decide to write a memoir about her career as a Grammy-winning artist, actress, and TV star.

Now that memoir has arrived. Who’s That Girl?, written with hip-hop journalist Kathy Iandoli, will bring Eve to Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Germantown on Wednesday for an event presented by Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books.

Timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of her Let There Be Eve … Ruff Ryder’s First Lady debut, the book tells the story of the Philly rapper then known as “the Pitbull in a skirt” who went on to score hits with Gwen Stefani, start the Fetish fashion line, act in the Barbershop movies, and star in her own sitcom.

Much of Eve’s story takes place in New York, where she briefly danced in a strip club as a teenager and met the rapper Mase, who started her on the road to success with the Ruff Ryders, the hip-hop crew led by DMX.

It also happens in Los Angeles, where she crossed paths with hip-hop luminaries like Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, and totaled a Maserati in a regrettable incident that sent her to rehab.

And for the last decade Eve, 45, has been based in London, where she lives with her husband, former race car driver and Gumball 3000 founder Maximillion Cooper, along with four stepchildren and son Wilde, 2.

But she still carries her hometown around with her wherever she goes.

Many times in Who’s That Girl? Eve can’t stop herself from doing something that her friends and associates consider rash and counterproductive.

That might mean asking much-feared hip-hop kingpin Suge Knight for career assistance. Or clapping back at the misogyny of male music executives, speaking up, no matter the consequences.

At times like that, she calls herself “Philly Eve” and the force that compels her is “the Philly in me.”

“I think that if you are from Philly, there is something in you that can never be taken away,” she said to The Inquirer. “You’re a grinder. You work your ass off and you don’t take s—. When somebody disrespects you, you don’t not speak up.

“When I went to New York, people used to say to me, ‘Philly girls are so feisty.’ I was like, ‘Yeah we are. Don’t forget it!’ I wouldn’t want to be from any other city, ever.”

Eve grew up Eve Jihan Jeffers in West Philly, first in the Mill Creek Homes before eventually moving to Germantown. While living with her mother’s extended family, her aunt turned her on to LL Cool J, and hip hop in general.

As a teenager in Philly in the 1990s, she was keenly aware of the success of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince and more so, The Roots, whose first album came out in 1993.

“Anytime I saw Black Thought I’d act like a total goofball,” she writes. “Most of the girls did. He didn’t pay us any mind, though. He was focused on blowing up. I totally knew the feeling. Seeing The Roots do it, though? That was all the inspiration I needed.”

She wanted to go to the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts in South Philly, but her mother thought an art-focused school was impractical, so she went to Martin Luther King in Germantown.

Rather than mimic the jazz- and R&B-flavored vibe of the early Roots, the hip-pop of Will Smith, or the original gangsta rap of Schoolly D, Eve found her own 215 avenue.

“Philly made me the type of emcee that I am, 100%,” she said, speaking from London. “It was that Philly battle rap. 16 bars. 24 bars. No hooks. I didn’t know how to write a song, I didn’t have the skill set. That came later.”

She would battle all over town. “Third and South, on the corner, there was always a cypher on the weekends. At school at my lunch, and then I’d skip class, and do the next lunch, and the next lunch. In the neighborhood around the school. And at the Gallery!”

Eve was always the lone woman in these, except for friends who acted as her hype girls. Guys were put in their place with the foolproof strategy of demeaning their penis size and scoffing at their ability to get girls.

“That’s how I started to come up in the city, honestly,” she recalled. After South Street victories, she would celebrate at Ishkabibble’s with “a turkey chopped with cheese, and a Gremlin. Obviously.”

Before Let There Be Eve, she had brushes with success, with a song on 1998′s Bulworth soundtrack under the name Eve of Destruction. She was signed by Dr. Dre to his Aftermath label and moved to Los Angeles at 19, only to be dropped. She headed home before the music was even released.

And though she rapped on “You Got Me,” The Roots 1999 track that became their best-known song, her name was left off the credits. When the song won a Grammy in 2000, she didn’t receive one.

Years later, she writes in Who’s That Girl?, when she went on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, “Questlove wanted to give me his Grammy for the song, but his had broken in half, and by then I had my own Grammy. (For “Let Me Blow Ya Mind,” with Stefani.) I didn’t need (or want) his broken one.”

That rift with has long since been smoothed over. “I was pissed at the time,” she said. “No one knew who I was except The Roots, and then I couldn’t even brag about it because my name isn’t on it. But now me and Black Thought and Questlove are good.” She guested at The Roots Picnic in 2019, and will be on a soon-to-post episode of the Questlove Supreme podcast.

Early on, Eve hooked up with Beanie Sigel on a pair of Philly classics in “Remember Them Days” and “Philly, Philly,” in which she rhymed “Philly the s—” with “blonde bombshell b—.”

Since then Eve’s had roles in three Barbershop movies as wells as her UPN sitcom Eve, which ran for three seasons in the ‘00s. Her most recent album is Lip Lock, from 2013, and she cohosted the talk show, The Talk, from 2017 to 2020.

In Who’s That Girl? Eve writes that when she was first succeeding with the Yonkers-based Ruff Ryders, she would be welcomed home as a heroine.

“I’d go home to Philly, and everybody was like my aunt, uncle, or cousin. They really repped for me like I was the pride of the city,” she writes. “I’d walk down the street and people would tell me how proud they were of me.”

She reflects on those years, living a world away in England.

“I’m a different person from that young girl who was rapping like her life depended on it,” she writes. “I’m a wife now, a mother to a beautiful son and four amazing bonus kids. … But most of all, I’m still that girl from Philly who can rap her ass off.”

Uncle Bobbie’s X Eve - Book Tour, Sept. 18, 7 p.m., Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church (East), 2800 W. Cheltenham Ave., Phila., unclebobbies.com/events