It’s been years since Eve dropped a solo project, but her pulse remains on hip hop culture. During a recent interview with Trevor Noah, the veteran female rapper, who contributed to the scene as both a solo artist and member of the legendary Ruff Ryders, shared her thoughts on the current state of hip hop, particularly her dissatisfaction with some of today’s artists.
“What I don’t [like] is there’s a lot of clones. I feel like back in the day, uniqueness was celebrated. I think now there’s a lot of the sameness and that to me, I’m just like, meh. It makes it boring a lot of the time—for me,” she said before clarifying that her statement wasn’t about every musician.
“Not everyone! ‘Cause there are some dope artists out that I actually really do love, but, yeah.”
She also noted her frustration with the roadblocks and obstacles women emcees still have to overcome as they attempt to make their way into the industry.
“It’s so ridiculous that we’re still talking about this from the time that I came out, like why? Honestly, it’s so frustrating to me,” the “Love is Blind” emcee said before offering some words of encouragement. “My advice would just keep going, we need a balance we need female voices and female energy, it can’t just be a group of dudes out there,” she said to women aspiring to be rappers. “Just believe, believe harder than you’ve believed in anything else.”
Amid her motivational message, Eve highlighted one of the benefits of the music industry she wasn’t afforded on her come up. “One advantage the younger generation have that I didn’t is that you don’t have to rely on a label to be seen, whereas I did,” the “Gangsta Lovin’” star explained. “There are so many different forms of social media and build your own following, it’s such a beautiful thing. I had to rely on a whole machine of people.”
Eve’s critique about the state of hip hop, specifically her thoughts on existing “clones,” contrasts with her view on the “uniqueness” she believes was displayed during the 90s and early 2000s. With her new show “Queens,” she hopes viewers will get a glimpse of some of what she experienced in that era.
“Hip-Hop is great all the way all the time, but 90s hip hop, 2000s hip hop, there was a movement at that time,” she said. “There was a pureness, there was a uniqueness. I think there was so many crews and so much, I don’t know, the energy at that time was great. And that, for me with this show, if we can capture that, people who know about that time will love this show. Also, it’s not just the music, it’s the women.”
See Eve’s interview on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” below.