Recording with Dr. Dre could be brutal. Eve learned that when he made her redo the same line again and again. She hated it then. Today, she calls it one of the reasons he is great.
The price of perfection
Dr. Dre is notorious for his precise approach to production. Artists who worked with him, from Xzibit to Snoop Dogg, shared horror stories about doing one take after another to get just one word right.
Eve had a similar experience. However, in hindsight, she sees this meticulous attention to detail as Dre’s strength, which also brought out the best in her as an artist.
Speaking to comedian and presenter Romesh Ranganathan, who has long been a fan, Eve said that Dre made her redo her bars as many times as everybody else.
“For me, it was the word ‘block’ on ‘Satisfaction’”, Eve almost shudders. “I was like, I’m saying ‘block’. I can hear myself saying it. Everybody else can hear it. And he was like, ‘You’re not saying it the way I need you to say it’. And as soon as I got it, I heard what he heard. And that’s what makes him great. Because it was so simple but so pivotal to how this next part worked. I was like, “How the hell did you hear that?’ But yeah, I think I did it 25 times”.
Swizz Beatz, with whom Eve also worked extensively, reminds her of Dr. Dre’s perfectionism. Still, his vibe is different, Eve admits.
Dre hears every element as part of the same composition, she says. “For him, the words are part of the beat as well. It’s not just the drums. It’s how you’re saying this word. How the melody is flowing out of you”. We know that it works: the songs Dr. Dre produced proved to be among the most popular and successful of the era.
Long shifts
He was not the easiest person to work with, Eve notes, but his personal work ethic was inspiring.
“He used to get on my nerves”, the rapper recalls. “But it would bring the best out of me. He would never let me leave the studio. I used to hate writing choruses. If I hadn’t stayed there and wrote “Blow Ya Mind”, that whole song I won a Grammy for!.. He would not let me leave. He was like, ‘You can just do it. Stop being lazy’. I’m like, ‘I’m not lazy. I write rhymes’. But if he hadn’t kept me there, you know…”, Eve shrugs.
She was just 22 when “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”, the lead single for her second album, dropped in the summer of 2001. Obviously, she wrote and recorded it while being even younger. She had already established herself in hip hop by then, but “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” opened the door to fashion, acting, and television. For Eve, a battle rapper whose singular goal was to make it in music, it felt like a dream come true.
Full circle
Naturally, her success was not without setbacks. Dr. Dre signed the young, feisty rapper from Philadelphia the moment he heard her. However, he soon got distracted by his new acquisition, Slim Shady. Eve felt that all Dre’s attention had shifted, and she did not have enough studio time with him. Her suspicions were confirmed when Aftermath dropped her just eight months later.
Swizz Beatz produced Eve’s debut album, Let There Be Eve…Ruff Ryders’ First Lady, which debuted at No.1 in the US. But Dr. Dre later reunited with Eve on her next two projects, producing several successful singles, including the Grammy-winning collaboration with Gwen Stefani, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”. Maybe the story would have been different if they had not parted ways so early. Still, Eve has no complaints – she ended up building the kind of career she once dreamed about. She moved to the UK but did not switch her allegiance from hip hop, and she continues to perform to this day.