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Eve vibez

The first woman to win a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, the Ruff Ryders' first lady, and a genuine movie star. Eighteen tracks of Eve doing all of it at once.

Philadelphia's first lady

Eve Jihan Cooper, from Philadelphia, arrived through the Ruff Ryders camp in 1999 and immediately did something unusual: her debut, Let There Be Eve...Ruff Ryders' First Lady, went straight to number one on the Billboard 200 — only the third album by a woman rapper to do so.

She was never the most technically dazzling rapper of her era, and she did not need to be. Eve's assets were presence, timing and an unusual ear for a hook — she understood before most of her peers that the right sung chorus could carry a rap record onto pop radio without diluting the verses. Her career since has spanned film (Barbershop), television, a sitcom in her own name, and a long stint as a host in the UK.

What to listen for

"Let Me Blow Ya Mind" with Gwen Stefani is the landmark — a Dr. Dre and Scott Storch production that won the first-ever Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration in 2002. It still sounds effortless.

"Love Is Blind" is the other essential and the most serious thing she recorded: a song about a friend killed by a partner, delivered with a fury that has not dimmed. It is one of the most direct treatments of domestic violence in mainstream rap.

The features are where her value to other artists shows. The Roots' "You Got Me" with Erykah Badu — her verse is the one people quote. Amerie's "1 Thing," Gwen Stefani's "Rich Girl," Kelly Rowland's "Like This," Keyshia Cole's "Never" and Doja Cat's "Tonight" span twenty years of her being the guest who improves the record.

"No, No, No" with Stephen and Damian Marley is the reggae excursion, and the Ruff Ryders material — "Ready 2 Ryde" with Snoop, "That's What It Is" with Styles P — shows the crew she came up in.

Go deeper

Scorpion (2001) is the album to hear whole; it is where the pop instincts and the rap credibility are in best balance.

For the Ruff Ryders story, DMX and The LOX are the other pillars, and the compilations capture a specific late-1990s New York moment.

For the lineage of women rappers who made space for her: MC Lyte, Queen Latifah and Lil' Kim. And for who followed: essentially everyone currently working, though the debt is rarely acknowledged.

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