Eve Jeffers

Rapper / Actor

Name at birth: Eve Jihan Jeffers

Eve Jeffers hit the hip-hop charts in the late 1990s as rapper Eve of Destruction, and by 2003 had branched out into feature films and landed her own series on cable television. Industry lore has it that Eve got her start through an impromptu audition for music producer Dr. Dre in 1997. She released "Eve of Destruction" in 1998, a single that was featured in the Warren Beatty movie Bulworth, but Eve was released from Dre's Aftermath Records before recording an album. Thanks to DMX, Eve was signed by Ruff Ryders, and her 1999 debut album, Eve: Ruff Ryders' First Lady, entered the charts at no. 1. Her reputation as a tough MC continued with her second release, Scorpion (2001), and her acting career and duets with Gwen Stefani ("Let Me Blow Ya Mind") and Alicia Keys ("Gangsta Lovin'") proved Eve's appeal to mainstream audiences. In addition to having her own TV series (Eve, on UPN), she has appeared in the films XXX (2002, with Vin Diesel), Barbershop (2002, with Ice Cube) and The Woodsman (2004, with Kyra Sedgwick).

Extra credit: Before she was an MC, Eve worked as a dancer in a strip club... Eve is known for her fashion sense and has her own line of clothing... Arrested in April of 2007 for driving while intoxicated, she was fined and ordered the following June to wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet for 45 days.

Other hip-hop stars include Missy Elliott, Lil' Kim and Queen Latifah.