Eve says there are “a lot of clones” in hip-hop these days.
The ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’ rapper was a major player in the late-90s and early-2000s hip-hop scene, and while she has insisted there are “some dope artists” out there, she feels there is a lack of “uniqueness” like there was in her heyday.
Speaking on ‘The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’, the ‘Queens’ star said: “What I don’t [like] is there’s a lot of clones. I feel like back in the day, uniqueness was celebrated. I think now there’s a lot of the sameness and that to me, I’m just like, meh. It makes it boring a lot of the time – for me. Not everyone! ‘Cause, there are some dope artists out that I actually really do love, but, yeah.”
The 42-year-old star plays Brianna ‘Professor Sex’ in the American musical drama series, ‘Queens’, which sees four rappers in their forties reunite their group in a bid to revive their former glory, and Eve hopes they were able to capture the “pureness” of Hip-Hop back in the day.
She said: “Well, 90s Hip-Hop, I’m sorry, Hip-Hop is great all the way all the time, but 90s Hip-Hop, 2000s Hip=Hop, there was a movement at that time.
“There was a pureness, there was a uniqueness. I think there was so many crews and so much, I don’t know, the energy at that time was great. And that, for me with this show, if we can capture that, people who know about that time will love this show. Also, it’s not just the music, it’s the women.”
Meanwhile, Eve previously revealed she was saddened that female rappers are still having a tough time in the industry, decades after she hit the scene.
She said: “It’s so ridiculous that we’re still talking about this from the time that I came out, like why? Honestly, it’s so frustrating to me. My advice would just keep going, we need a balance we need female voices and female energy, it can’t just be a group of dudes out there. Just believe, believe harder than you’ve believed in anything else. One advantage the younger generation have that I didn’t is that you don’t have to rely on a label to be seen, whereas I did. There are so many different forms of social media and build your own following, it’s such a beautiful thing. I had to rely on a whole machine of people.”