Eve is sick. Her nose is running, her throat is sore, she's achy and she's had the sneezes all morning. There are red scratches beneath her nostrils from blowing and wiping, and there's two packages of Kleenex in her pocket. Asked what she'd like to drink, she answers, "TheraFlu on the rocks."

Twenty-two-year-old Eve Jihan Jeffers is crawling through midtown-Manhattan traffic, her gold BMW X5 driven by her twenty-seven-year-old live-in boyfriend, hip-hop producer Stevie J. Occasionally she hears "Who's That Girl?," the single from her second album, Scorpion, seeping from someone else's car. You can see deep into a person from the way she acts when she's sick. Eve acts like a baby. The admitted mama's girl pouts, whines and demands her way. First she turns the heat in the car up to sauna level, overcompensating for the light clothes she's wearing on this cold and rainy afternoon: a navy sweat shirt by Blue Marlin that says BROOKLYN, a one-shouldered black T-shirt, tight Diesel jeans and black Timberlands. Then, for a little pick-me-up she heads over to Mimi So's jewelry shop. In about five minutes she decides to buy two giant diamond rings, a pair of diamond earrings that are 1.5 carats each and a diamond necklace with glittering class-D stones running all the way around.

"She spent a hundred grand real quick," Stevie says.

"Would you shut up?" Eve shoots back. "You divulging too much information. Is that a word?" After nearly two years together, they bicker like the Jeffersons.

"You spent good money, baby."

"Will you shut up?!"

The bill for all four pieces sets her back $100,000. The necklace alone is $65,000. They drive right over to her accountant's office so she can sign a check that he'll send to Mimi. Her accountant, Horace Madison, already knows of the purchase and isn't happy. Madison has a big 'fro and muscles bulging beneath a tight white sweater, and, on his wall, platinum plaques from DMX and OutKast and a photo of Eve with this inscription from her: "Thanks for making me scared to spend my money."

Madison is extremely aggressive in pushing his clients to be financially responsible. Today, Eve gets a lecture: "There's so many things that are so much more important than living up to, or actually living down to, the expectations that the public has. Don't live your videos." And she signs Madison's "Stupid Letter," which alleges that the transaction (not necessarily the signee) is stupid. It says things like, "I am not going to continue to allow you to make terrible financial moves. This is your chance to be set up for life."

But Madison isn't too upset. Today's splurge, they both say, is the first of Eve's entire career. The jewels you've seen her wearing have been gifts from her record company, Ruff Ryder. The Chanel, Gucci and Roberto Cavalli that line her gorgeous closets have come free. And thus, after just four years in the record business, one double-platinum album - her debut, Eve: Ruff Ryders' First Lady - some nice singles, some touring and some sage money management, Eve is set for life.

Add to that the money she'll rake in from Scorpion, her slick new album featuring the boast rhymes she's known for and guests such as Dr. Dre and No Doubt's Gwen Stefani on the lazy funk of "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" as well as Damian and Stephen Marley on the outstanding dance-hall/hip-hop joint, "No, No, No." Scorpion is gold after two months, and in July she'll go on the TRL tour with Destiny's Child, Jessica Simpson and Nelly. All this will add up to more blue-chip stocks in Eve's portfolio.

Like most female MCs, Eve was introduced as the little-sister-in-rhyme of a popular male MC - DMX, in her case. Also like most female MCs, she blended a feline sexiness with a tomboyish quality - she called herself "a pit bull in a skirt" - that gave her access to male and female fans. She admits that she wouldn't be as popular if she wasn't female: "It's so many guys out there, I don't think I would." But even though hip-hop is primarily the pantheon of men, who doesn't want to see hot rhymes spit from thick Nubian lips or the hip-hop strut done in three-inch camouflage-colored heels? Where Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown sell sex in their rhymes, talking about carnality and glamour, Eve is more about hustling and street life. Put them on the street, and Foxy and Kim might become call girls, while Eve might become a pimp.

As Madison prints the Stupid Letter, he informs Eve that she has recently purchased $50,000 in tax-free bonds and $50,000 in stocks, including Viacom, which owns MTV, which shows Eve's videos. (Later, Stevie calls this "a good conflict of interest.") Young Eve has a nice investment portfolio, a retirement plan and a home in New Jersey. Years ago her mother told her, "It's a short-lived industry, so make sure you cover yourself." Now she's the first woman in her family to own a home.

"A lot of artists might have three cars," Madison says, "but don't own a home and don't have an investment portfolio. From a financial-stability standpoint, Eve's ahead of probably eighty-five percent of people in the urban-music business right now. And that's largely from one album."

Eve smiles like a teacher's pet. "I don't ever call you up and say, 'I'm bored. May I have a Bentley, please?'"

"You are one of our best clients, because you listen."

"I listen 'cause I'm scared to be broke. 'Cause I been broke before." Eve spent her first fifteen years in the projects of West Philadelphia. "I don't wanna know broke ever, ever [she says "ever" eight times in all], ever again. I see me at thirty in the Hamptons or in Maui on a boat, chillin'. With no worries." She turns back to Madison. "Why you gotta call it the Stupid Letter, though?"

Eve grew up an only child in the projects, always hanging around with the boys. At twelve, she began rapping and singing in talent shows. Rhyming won her more attention, so she quit singing. "I did any talent show, ever," she says. "Anytime they was havin' one, I was there. If I won last week, I'm back. I don't give a f---."

"I thought it was just a phase," says her mother, Julie Wilcher, of the talent-show assault. She works for a medical publishing company and produces fashion shows, and she often still calls Eve by her childhood nickname, Miss Poo-a-doo: "I thought she was gonna outgrow it, and life was gonna move on. But she never did. Eve enjoys playing to a crowd. She likes the attention, she enjoys the energy that bounces off the crowd to her."

In the tenth grade, Eve and her friend Jennifer Pardue created a group called Edjp, which stands for Eve of Destruction Jenny-Poo. It's pronounced Egypt. They recorded an album, and Eve was hooked. After graduation from Martin Luther King High in Philadelphia, Pardue went on to college, but Eve's mother sat her down. "I know your head is not [in college]," Wilcher says she told her. "It'd be a waste of time and money. If [music] is something you wanna do, let's see how it works out. At least you'll have tried, and you don't have to look back on it with any regrets, as in, 'If my mom had let me, yadda, yadda, yadda.'"

She auditioned for record companies and worked at retail stores such as Philadelphia's the Hiphop Shop. Once, for a month, she danced at a strip club in the Bronx called Golden Lady. "I was like, 'It's gotta be better than this,'" she says. "'There's no way this could be my life. I'm talented, I'm smart, I know what I really wanna do. I'm-a do it.'"

One Friday in 1997, she auditioned for Dr. Dre's label, Aftermath. On Sunday, she was flying to L.A. Aftermath put her in the studio for a week and let her produce a three-song demo. At the end of the week, she went to Dr. Dre's mansion: "He heard the songs and said, 'Let's make a deal.' Those were his exact words." He gave her a week to go back to Philly and pack her bags. She moved to California and recorded, but after eight months Dre dropped her from the label and shipped her back to Philly. She was devastated: "I stayed in the house in my pajamas for a month."

"She was a little depressed," Wilcher recalls. "I told her, 'Keep your chin up. By this time next year, you'll be smiling again.' I just felt she had the talent, she's a reasonably attractive girl, and she had the right people around her."

A few months later, the phone rang again, and soon Eve was in Yonkers, New York, meeting the CEOs of Ruff Ryders. "They threw me in a cipher with Drag-On and InfraRed," Eve says. "They just put a beat on and said, 'All right, yo, let her spit.' I said rhymes I had written for Dre. If I woulda failed that, I don't know where I'd be now." (Later she amends that: "I woulda been a makeup artist. That's where my plans were goin'.")

The second single from Scorpion is "Let Me Blow Ya Mind," featuring Stefani, produced by heartbreaker Dre. Wait, how did Dre end up on the album? "I never had no animosity toward him," Eve says. Long pause. "After a couple of months." Once she'd become famous and began seeing him at various functions, she told him, "You better do somethin' on the album." But things were far from smooth in the studio.

"They was beefin'!" Stevie says.

"'Cause I'm a brat, and so is he," Eve says. He got his formula and I got mine. And we was clashin'."

"He was like, 'You wanna do it this way,' " Stevie says. "She'd be like, 'I'm tired right now.' He was like, 'F--- off!' She was like, 'Well, f--- you!' I was like, 'Oh, s---!'

"But we made a hit."

At Pastis, a trendy downtown Manhattan eatery (which is closed in order to set up for dinner but open for her), Eve is hankering for hot liquids. She orders green tea, onion soup (she says, "This is stinky like someone's foot," but eats it anyway) as well as fried fish and french fries. Sitting beside her is Stevie, the first real love of her life. He has EVE tattooed on his arm, she has SLEAZY'S GIRL on hers. He plays thirteen instruments and has long worked in Puffy's stable, but on Scorpion he produced only two tracks. "My purpose," he says, "was makin' sure she felt good every day, 'cause that makes a better artist." But this is one of those bickering-brother-and-sister type of couples, and right now he's getting on her nerves.

"We the same person," she says. "Only he's a man and I'm a woman. It's ridiculous. I've never dealt with myself. And it's hard. . . ."

"We both Scorpios," Stevie cuts in.

"It's intense," Eve says. "But ever since our first date, we been together every day."

"Except when we're out of town. Other than that . . ."

". . . we're always together. Sickeningly. I mean, sometimes we have real relationship issues. . . ."

". . . We argue. . . ."

". . . But it's never media issues. . . ."

". . . It's relationship issues."

"Stop it!" she yells. "Can I talk?!"

How did this love affair start?

"She chased me down."

"Stevie, don't lie," she says, cutting her eyes at him.

The story they tell together is that when Eve was in the process of recording her debut album, Stevie repeatedly asked her out, to no avail. One day, he even stopped by the video shoot for her first solo single, "What You Want."

"I had my shorty with me, my little son," he says, "and we both had our blue minks on, and she was like, 'Oh, you're so cute!'"

"I was talkin' 'bout your son. Not you."

He finally asked Ruff Ryder CEO Darrin Dean whether he could ask her out. She was impressed: "I thought that was so cute."

When was the first date?

"She came to my house and interrupted my spades game."

"Why you keep lyin'? He called me to come over, and he was playin' spades. I ain't interrupted nothin'."

"Anyway. I took her to the back room, we had a conversation and that was it."

"After that, we was together every day." They look at each other with love in their eyes. They're about to share a delicate kiss. He leans toward her. But before he can get too close, she throws an elbow into his ribs to push him back. "Stop!" she squeals. True love.

[From Issue 872 — July 5, 2001]