Eve Talks Being ‘Laziest Stripper Ever,’ Her DUI Wake-Up Call & Losing DMX (Exclusive)

Since her debut album 25 years ago, Eve has been blowing up the charts.

“Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi spoke with Eve, who opened up about her experiences with fame, addiction, mental health, and even working at a strip club before becoming a rap queen. She's sharing it all in her new, nothing-off-limits book “Who’s That Girl?: A Memoir.”

Eve was discovered in the club, calling herself the “laziest stripper ever.” She explained, “We named it that just  ’cause it’s funny, but I mean, I won’t say ‘discovered’ so much as, you know, that time in my life… I was 17, but that pivotal moment in my life was the conversation I had with Mase at that time and him kind of being that voice that was already in my head of, 'Why, why am I here? What am I doing here? I know I really want hip hop and music to be my life. What am I doing here?'"

“While I was in there, I was still focused on what I wanted my life to be, so I just didn’t participate in what the atmosphere was, which is crazy,” Eve added.

Eve is also getting candid about her struggles with anxiety and depression, which were not taken seriously at the time. She commented, “It was more like, ‘Oh, you’ll be alright. You’ll be alright, just get onstage, you’re fine. Go sleep it off… have a drink.’”

She emphasized, “Nobody talked about that, and it’s hard. There were times in my life where I did try to have conversations with people of like, ‘I’m just not feeling right, I’m feeling sad.’ I didn’t even know what it was, so how can I explain it?"

Eve admitted that she felt “ignored” when she expressed her feelings, saying, “Not in a bad, way, I just think that just wasn’t where we were at the time.”

Eve’s drinking eventually led to a DUI arrest in 2007. She recalled, “It was wearing the anklet that made me, obviously, have to sit still. I couldn’t have a drink for 56 days and I was able to kind of realize like, ‘Why are you drinking? Why are you trying to numb yourself? What is going on?’”

According to Eve, that period of time “saved my life.”

In the memoir, Eve also opens up about losing her friend DMX. She commented, “It’s definitely hard, it’s hard that he’s not here, but I do truly believe that he’s at peace… That’s what makes it slightly easier. Obviously, it would be better for us as humans to have him here and, of course, for his children, that would be beautiful. But I think him, as a person, the torment that he was going through — I do believe he is at peace.”

Another topic of conversation in the book is her struggle with infertility.

Eve said, “As a woman, you kind of are told, ‘You get married. You get pregnant.' That’s what we are supposed to do, so no one talks to you about there could be a possibility that you don’t and there might be an issue. In the beginning it was really, really hard. I had an ectopic pregnancy. That’s the first time I talked about it is in the book, outwardly. I remember going through that and feeling like it was me, that there was something wrong, like, 'What's happening?' As women, we put so much pressure on ourselves anyway for everything, and that's just that added pressure."

Eve also goes into depth about undergoing IVF, saying, “The hormones and the stress and just the wanting of getting to that finish line, that goal, it’s a lot.”

Eve is now a proud mama of a toddler and four stepkids, and is living across the pond in London.