Eve is ready to look back on her early years in the music industry on Ruff Ryders Chronicles. The five-part BET series kicked off last week, recounting the rise of the legendary Ruff Ryders Entertainment in the late ’90s and 2000s. The label was founded by siblings Joaquin “Waah” Dean, Darin “Dee” Dean and Chivon Dean, built around Yonkers, New York, rappers DMX and The Lox, and later included Jadakiss, Drag-On, Jin, producer Swizz Beatz and the Ruff Ryders’ First Lady herself, Eve.
“I was the most protected female on the planet at that time,” the rapper, actress and host of The Talk tells ET’s Kevin Frazier. “I was Baby Sis, but not like, coddled. Baby Sis in a way that you were gonna protect, she hustles with us.”
“That time in music history was just phenomenal… I don’t think there will ever be another movement that way, ever.”
Eve signed to the Ruff Ryders label after a brief stint with Dr. Dre and Aftermath, and recalls her once-in-a-lifetime introduction into the rap game came after a chance encounter with rapper Mase when she was working as a stripper — or, as she jokes, “the laziest stripper on the planet.”
“It was a slow night and this guy comes walking in, and one of the girls who I hung out with was like, ‘Yo that’s that new kid, he just got signed to Puff,'” she remembers. “I go over there and I’m kinda just like, ‘Yeah, what’s up, you want a dance?’… He just laughed, actually, and he was like, ‘What do you wanna do with your life?’ And I was like, ‘You don’t know me, don’t be asking about me!’ Long story short, he literally was like ‘You’re not supposed to be here. What is it that you wanna do?’ I told him I wanna be a rapper, and he was like, ‘Get dressed, let’s go ride around the city and listen to some beats.'”
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