In her; memoir Who’s That Girl?, Grammy-winning rapper Eve peels back the curtain on a chapter of her life that collided music industry politics, personal curiosity, and the volatile aura of one of hip-hop’s most notorious figures — Marion “Suge” Knight.
It was August 2001 in Santa Monica, and Eve was cohosting the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards along with Luther Vandross, Leeza Gibbons and Shemar Moore, when whispers rippled through the Civic Auditorium: Suge Knight was in the building. “I knew what I had to do,” she writes. She approached her security guard with a request that drew a look of disbelief: Bring me Suge Knight.
Her bodyguard balked, but when she spotted Knight backstage, Eve went straight to him. “Hi, I have been wanting to meet you,” she recalls telling him.
That introduction led to dinner at Crustacean in Beverly Hills, where Knight offered to help her navigate her tensions with Interscope Records. By then, Eve had released two albums on the label and was chafing at what she describes as a “hostile working relationship” with Dr. Dre. “I was still in my little mood about Dre even though we made a solid hit together, so having Suge, his former boss at Death Row stomping around Interscope felt like some sweet revenge,” she admits. “I am not really sure how I concocted this idea yet here we were…”
Knight followed up with a visit to Interscope’s offices on her behalf — an intervention that, according to Eve, chilled her standing with the then label head Jimmy Iovine. “I feel like he (Jimmy) took his anger out on my third album,” she writes.
Their relationship, she insists, was never transactional, though Knight’s courtship came wrapped in unmistakable romantic gangster symbolism. “Red plants, red furs… he’s a Blood. Maybe my red hair was a green flag for him too,” she notes.
The romance was short-lived. Ruff Ryders founders Dee and Waah Dean, her mentors and protectors, made their disapproval clear. “They didn’t like the idea of me hanging out with Suge at all,” Eve writes. “When my guys said it was time to cut the cord, I didn’t think twice.”
She called Knight to end things. His response surprised her: “If I was your little sis, I would tell you the same thing.”
“Who’s That Girl” is out now via Hanover Square Press.
