Rapper also says you don't need a tambourine to get down to 'Tambourine,' the hit single from August 7's Here I Am.
Eve giggles when she talks about her single "Tambourine." And no, she told us emphatically, you do not have to have an instrument to dance to the track in the club.
"It's a summer song, and I didn't want to do anything that sounded like anything on (the) radio," she said recently. "The sample, 'Shake your tambourine, go get yourself a whistle' - people are going to be like, 'Where am I going to get a tambourine?' So we had to make it a metaphor for shaking your ass."
Eve might shake her tambourine, but don't expect the former Ruff Ryder to do anything nearly as elaborate as Beyoncé's moves in the "Get Me Bodied" video. "It has to be comfortable. I get stressed out about it. Dancing is so different," she said about doing too much choreography.
Last week in Brooklyn, she shot a new video for the song "Give It to You" with Sean Paul. No crazy dance steps, but a little grinding on the reggae superstar. "That's my favorite song on the album," she said. "It's definitely upbeat like 'Tambourine.' It's reggae, the beat is Spanish, it's a nice collaboration of sound. Another summer joint. It's a club song. Working with Sean, I've known him for years, but for some reason we never got to do a song together. It looked like we weren't going to get to do this song either 'cause he's so busy, but we talk on the phone and e-mail."
Eve's Here I Am LP comes out August 7, and T.I. and Robin Thicke pop up for guest spots.
"The Robin song is called 'Fantasy,' " she said. "My lyrics are basically talking about ladies - how when guys see you in a club but (aren't) ready to talk to you. Like a guy who sees you in a club and he wants to do all these things to you. ... You're his fantasy. It's real. A guy might be looking out from across the club like, 'Oh my God, I love her,' but you might not even know he's looking at you."
Despite considerably less-than-planned involvement from Dr. Dre on the album, Eve says she's still on his Aftermath label. And Swizz Beatz was able to fill in quite nicely in Dre's absence. "The decision was to have Dre start off the album, but Dre is kinda busy," Eve said. "Swizz is my brother. He knows how to work with me. What was supposed to happen, (Swizz) was just going to do a couple [of tracks], but once we get together, we can't stop working. He knows me really well. We decided he might as well be one of the executive producers."
Eve says she and the Doc are still all good. He did one song for the album called "Fire," and there's a possibility for more before the deadline.
"Dre likes when projects are done when you come to him. He'd rather it that way, so it's cool," she said.