Her latest challenge will be to reconnect with her fan base and seek new fans after an 11-year hiatus. As her own boss, she believes that she’s more than ready to make a comeback with her latest album, Lip Lock.
“I’m my own boss now,” Eve says. “It’s been a growing and learning process for me. I have to learn how to trust my own judgment and I have to learn to be OK with all the decisions that I make. Because I am the person who signs off on everything. My number one goal is to have fun making music again. With this record, I was so excited to get back in the field and write. The music might be different, but I’m more mature.”
With maturity, Eve has embraced the concept of falling in love again. After her tumultuous relationship with reality TV star Stevie J during her early 20s, Eve stopped dating to focus more on her career. But after meeting U.K. racer and entrepreneur Max Cooper, she eventually fell in love.
“My perspective on men has definitely changed,” she admits. “I’ve dated some ridiculous dudes. For women, if you are frustrated and keep attracting the same type of dude over and over again, it is not the dude, it is you. That is something I had to learn. I needed to figure out who I was and what I wanted before I attracted the guy I needed to be with.”
Eve has faced some backlash for dating Cooper, who is white. It was never in her plans to date outside of her race, but she could not ignore the strong attraction that existed between them.
“I never thought I would date outside of my race,” Eve admits. “I never thought it would seriously be something that I considered because of where we come from. Interracial dating is still not as prevalent in our community. But when I met him, it was something that was so familiar. We recognize each other in a deeper way. If somebody is treating me the way I’m supposed to be treated, who cares what race he happens to be? It took a while for us to get comfortable, but when things got serious, we went for it. When we first started having pictures taken of us, I got so many negative tweets. It shocked me. I wondered where all of that hatred was coming from. It annoys me because America is a great country. But there are a lot of hypocrites. Would you rather me date someone, like my ex [Stevie J], just because he’s black? Or would you rather me be happy?
