Mase Helped Eve Quit Stripping, “He Came Into The Club & Looked At Me”

Written By S. Samuel

Ruff Ryders' Eve has revealed that a past encounter with Mase inspired her to quit stripping and become a rapper in the 1990's.

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Eve explained her conversation with the former Bad Boy artist in an upcoming episode of VH1’s “Behind the Music” series this week.

“He came into the club and looked at me and literally was like, ‘What’s your name?’ And I gave him every stripper name under the sun!,” she reveals. “I was like, ‘I’m Ginger, I’m Sassy!’ He was like, ‘Why don’t you go get dressed, let’s go just talk.’ And we did, we talked throughout the night. He was like, ‘You’re really talented. What are you doing? You know you’re not supposed to be here. You know it.’ … It was a confirmation for me that all these thoughts, all this sadness. All these times that I wake up in the morning, I’m like, ‘Why do I feel like this?’ And I know I’m not supposed to be there. It just woke me up.” (Contact Music)

Eve reportedly stripped in the Bronx, New York.

She spent the better part of her days perfecting her craft, much to the detriment of her education. She stopped attending class and barely graduated high school. After her mother remarried, Eve moved to New York and began working as a dancer in a Bronx strip club. It was as a stripper that Eve met rapper Mase. Mase encouraged her to stop disrobing and start rapping on a professional level. (Mahongany Cafe)

She later moved on to a recording contract with Dr. Dre‘s Aftermath before officially joining Interscope’s Ruff Ryders.

Through some of her friends, Eve scored a meeting with Dr. Dre in Los Angeles, and surprised him by turning it into an audition. Dre liked what he heard and signed her to a one-year deal with his new label, Aftermath. Eve recorded a few tracks, including one, “Eve of Destruction,” that ended up on the Bulworth soundtrack in 1998. However, Aftermath was searching for a direction at the time, and Eve wound up lost in the shuffle. Her contract expired without an album even in the works, but fortunately, she’d met DMX when the rising new star was in Los Angeles promoting his smash debut, It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot. Eve passed a battle-rap audition to join DMX’s Ruff Ryders posse, and in 1999 she contributed to their label’s Ryde or Die, Vol. 1 compilation. (All Music)

Despite dropping three albums under Interscope, the rapper was recently dropped.

“[Interscope was] stupid because they didn’t drop me at first, they [just shelfed me] and dropped the ball,” Eve explained in an interview. “After ‘Tambourine’, they straight up were like, ‘Umm, yeah, nah, we’re not putting out the record.’ After that I was like ‘Y’all gotta let me go. I’ve been here 11 years and you’re frontin on me?’ It got to that point…They promised me the machine. The machine is basically the roll out. It’s ‘Yo, when [‘Flirt’] comes out, we’ll give you this, we’ll give you that. And that’s what made me mad. It’d be different if we didn’t have a meeting where people promised me sh*t. If they were just like ‘Oh we’re going to put the album out and see what happens,’ that would be one thing…But they were like ‘No, we’re making sure this happens, it’s coming out on this date.’ It was concrete. But it’s all good, everything happens how it’s supposed to, when it’s supposed to.” (VIBE)

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Written by S. Samuel

Steven Samuel is the co-founder of SOHH.com.

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