Eve Explains Why She Revealed Her Stripper Past At the Beginning of Her Rap Career

She didn't want anyone to figure out her past before she could say it.

July 29, 2025

(Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Eve reflected on her time as a stripper during an interview with Nessa on Hot 97, revealing the reason that she told the world about her time as a dancer right at the beginning of her rap career.

At the radio station, Eve devoted part of her conversation to explaining why she informed everyone in her first-ever Rolling Stone interview that she stripped before she blew up as a rapper.

“I didn’t let it define me because I was the first person to put it out,” she explained around the 29:45 mark. “I put it in that story on purpose because I didn’t need nobody coming from the fucking bushes being like, 'Yo, I used to see you in the club.'"

Eve also spoke briefly about meeting Mase while she stripped and the advice that he gave her about pursuing her dream.

“We had a good convo, so when he opened his church, I was like, ‘Yep that makes sense,’” explained Eve, before revealing the message he had for her: “If you really want to be serious about what you’re doing, this is not where you’re supposed to be.”

Eve looked back at her time stripping when she was 17-years-old in her 2024 memoir Who’s That Girl? In an excerpt from the book that was shared with the world ahead of its release, she explained the reason that she turned to it in the first place.

“In my head, I was thinking, ‘I need to be grown now, and it’s the quickest way I can get out of the house,'” she wrote. “But I was so bad at it. And I was lazy.”

In 2020, Eve, who’s been very candid about her stripping experience, opened up about rapping for guests at her strip club in an interview with Extra.

“The club I was in had a lot of people from the music industry that used to come there and once I found that out, I was like, ‘This is gonna be my hustle,’” she explained. “So I would say to guys like, listen, ‘I will give you a lap dance for free if you think that I’m wack. Let me rap for you.’ And nine times out of ten they still gave me a tip because they were like, ‘Damn, yeah, you dope.’”