After five long years, Eve is finally staging her comeback. Coming into the eye of the storm on the attack of mainly male rappers, this could be her perfect entry-point. Her female counterparts haven’t faired so well in the past few years – Foxy Brown has been coming with Black Roses for I don’t know how long; Lil Kim has been out of jail for a year and all we’ve received is a lukewarm remix with her and Diddy; Trina can’t really compete lyrically and although she maintains herself in the spotlight, there has still been no album since 2005 when she put out the god-awful “Here We Go”; Rah Digga, who is easily in the top three, dips in and out of mainstream society but still never manages to break even; Remy Ma put out two singles and now we only see her on gossip sites; Shawnna also in my top three was the most promising of all with her hit “Gettin Some” and disappointedly never released a second single and therefore dropped the ball (to no fault of her own nonetheless). Now Eve is up to bat with her upcoming release Here I Am due in stores August 7. As I said earlier, she hasn’t released an album in five years so people will more than likely anticipate her new sound and if she doesn’t bring it this time around, she will end up with the same fate as her compadres. Also working in her favor is the fact that all male rappers are getting slammed from every which way concerning their lyrical content. Chamillionaire is one of the first to state that he will release a clean album (no derogatory references or profanity), but until then Eve has first chance to turn some things around. She was never much for deprecating lyrics in the first place and she is quick to let it be known that you definitely won’t see it this time around. In her June 2007 XXL article she states, “…the last time people saw me was with Gwen…People have seen me on TV now. I’m not gonna be like, ‘I’m in the street!’ Cause that’s not real.” We can more than likely expect radio friendly hits that will play on urban and pop stations. Her first single “Tambourine” hasn’t received much play though so we can only hope that she will go back and pull another single that will reel us in. Her long-time collaborator, friend and producer Swizz Beatz is riding high with “It’s Me Snitches” and he has produced many of the singles on Here I Am so I think that hopes are pretty high for the former Pitbull In A Skirt. If not, I guess we can wait for Foxy to resolve her “issues” and finally release that album.
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