photo credit: Gabe Ginsberg / Getty Images
Before there was unity, there was a little tension.
The First Lady of the Ruff Ryders, Eve, recalls a time where she felt like Lil Kim threw her a little shade. Back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Eve was just a young girl trying to make her mark on the hip-hop world. In a male-dominated industry, it was natural for any female artist to feel like they would be embraced by other female artist.
“Before I’d met anybody, I always thought of [female rappers in the industry] as this sisterhood,” Eve tells The Guardian. “I thought we were all gonna be friends. It was not like that. I’d see [Lil] Kim and say hi, and she’d be like: ‘Get the fuck away from me.’ Not verbally – you could just tell what she was thinking. But I was in a bubble and it never felt like a competition. I loved Missy [Elliott] and Kim but I never wanted to be them.”
It seems like we still have a lot of work to do in within the female artist community, but we’ve come a lot further. “Sometimes, I’m apprehensive because the industry has changed so much. What does that mean for an artist from the time I come from – are people going to care?”
After 6 years, Eve has released a new single, titled “Reload!”
View this post on InstagramThanks for showing my new single ‘Reload’ (Feat. @konshens) so much love