In late 2024, Eve Jeffers, professionally known as just Eve, released Who’s That Girl?: A Memoir, an autobiography she co-authored with Kathy Iandoli. As one of the most revered MCs to emerge from the highly competitive Philadelphia hip-hop scene, the woman who won a Grammy for her work with Gwen Stefani and who could spar with the likes of DMX and the rest of the Ruff Ryders crew, putting her life story down on paper seemed the next logical step. “A lot of the reason why I was so vulnerable in the book is because I was like, ‘You know what? If I’m going to write a book—[if] I’m going to put it all out—I’m going to be honest,’” Eve tells Ebro on the latest episode of The Message. “When I look back on some of the stories, when we first were about to put it out, I was like, ‘Oh my god, can I go talk about this stuff?’ But I did it, because everybody goes through something, and you need to hear that other people go through these things so you don’t feel alone.” As a lyricist, the MC who’d go on to dub herself the “illest pitbull in a skirt” transcended expectations from the very beginning, first as an uncredited guest on The Roots’ catalog-defining “You Got Me” and not long thereafter as the First Lady of the Ruff Ryders camp, regularly trading verses with The LOX and DMX while also making time to deliver stories she knew would strike a nerve with women who lived like she did. The most notable instance of that sisterhood is “Love Is Blind,” a true story she told in the form of a dedication to a friend who Eve watched suffer through a violent relationship. “I’m always grateful to Ruff Ryders, because at that time there was no music out like that,” she explains. “So the two verses of ‘Love Is Blind’ is a poem that I wrote when I was 16, because my friend at the time, who was 17, she was dating this older dude who was basically putting her up in an apartment. She got pregnant. She used to come to my house and have black eyes—it was crazy. I was the only person at the hospital with her when she had the baby. It’s a real story, and I didn’t really understand the impact of it until the song came out. Because people would come up to me and be like, ‘Thank you so much for that song. My sister went through this,’ or ‘I’m going through this, but I went and found some help.’” For her The Message playlist, Eve drew from her many continued inspirations, including the unimpeachable drug raps of Clipse’s “P.O.V.,” new music from an R&B all-timer still doing her thing (Mariah Carey’s “Type Dangerous”), and a young MC putting it down for the ladies in the image of Eve herself (GloRilla’s “LET HER COOK”). “I will be really honest: Not all of the albums are for me,” Eve says of what’s made it to her car stereo’s speakers these days. “But it’s not about that. It’s just about having so many female voices and energy back in hip-hop. That’s important. When I look out on that landscape, I’m so happy. It was nothing for so long. So now I’m proud of and happy for all the ladies that are out.”