On a balmy night in Paris recently, Eve found herself hiding in the corner of a nightclub. The opening bars of her 2001 hit Let Me Blow Ya Mind were ringing out from the sound system: “Drop your glasses, shake your asses.” This happens quite a lot, and Eve has her response down pat. “I walk away,” she says, “and I get really watch-y. I want to see if people are still into it. Thankfully, they were, otherwise I’d feel like shit.”

It has been 17 years since the US rapper’s biggest hits. Coming up in the late 90s with a platinum buzz cut and paw-print tattoos across her chest, Eve was one of a handful of female rappers whose success matched that of their male counterparts. Millennials came of age listening to Let Me Blow Ya Mind on rose-tinted iPod Minis or setting Who’s That Girl? as their polyphonic ringtone.

She is now preparing to release her first album in six years, one that hops between rap, reggae and pop balladry and reflects her new married life in the UK (hoped-for guests include Jessie Ware and Giggs). Dressed in black leggings and an Adidas jumper, Eve is eating chips in a pub in Notting Hill, west London, and exudes confidence. It is hard to imagine her feeling like shit.

Before she was a rapper, Eve Jihan Jeffers was a choirgirl from west Philadelphia. Her plan was to be a singer, but when she joined an all-female covers group called Dope Girl Posse, she switched to rapping at the suggestion of her manager. At 18, while working in a strip club to pay the bills (“I’m from the hood,” she shrugs), she had a chance meeting with the rapper Ma$e, who told her: “If you really want to rap, you need to rap.” Eve took his advice, stopped stripping and focused on music. She was flown to LA to sign with Dr Dre’s Aftermath label, but was dropped after eight months without explanation. “I’d bragged, and had this big going-away party, and then I was back at my mom’s house riding the bus again. I was really depressed, but I needed it to happen. I was a battle rapper, but I didn’t know how to make songs.”

A month later, she signed to Bronx-based label Ruff Ryders, whose main export was the rapper DMX. She describes it as her “hip-hop bootcamp”, which taught her how to evolve as an artist. Her debut album, Let There Be Eve, reached No 1 in the US, making her only the third female rapper to land the top spot after Lauryn Hill and Foxy Brown. “There definitely weren’t a lot of females out there, and the labels were basically trying to make you get naked,” she says. But with Ruff Ryders, it was always: ‘We like who you are, we’re not going to try and change you.’”

She says she was unaware of how the music industry would pit female rappers against one another. “Before I’d met anybody, I always thought of it as this sisterhood. I thought we were all gonna be friends. It was not like that. I’d see [Lil] Kim and say hi, and she’d be like: ‘Get the fuck away from me.” Not verbally – you could just tell what she was thinking. But I was in a bubble and it never felt like a competition. I loved Missy [Elliott] and Kim but I never wanted to be them.”

Now, on the verge of releasing album number five, she is 40. “I’m not as stressed about what people think any more – that’s a great feeling.” She wants to make music that makes other women feel as empowered – new track Scuses is a gutsy reprove of bad ex-boyfriends. “Whether it’s me talking to my past self, or to future girls, it’s saying: ‘You don’t need to deal with the bullshit. Keep it moving!’ You have that a-ha moment where you go: ‘You know what? Fuck this shit!’”

Paranoia does still creep in. “Sometimes, I’m apprehensive because the industry has changed so much. What does that mean for an artist from the time I come from – are people going to care?” In 2013, she brought out Lip Lock, her first album in 11 years, and it sank without trace. “I kind of retreated; I had to really pick myself back up.” Now, she says: “It’s the right time. I’m trying to give people a feeling. Because the music I listen to when I’m getting ready to go out, when I’m getting dressed or when I’m driving – it lifts my mood. I want people to feel good.”

Eve’s life now is strikingly different from her 00s heyday. In 2010, she met British billionaire Maximillion Cooper, as a guest at Gumball 3000, the charity car rally he founded. It is attended by a slew of rich-list petrolheads, and the idea is to drive supercars 3,000 miles, shipping them from country to country via private jet, and partying each night in a new city. “I remember thinking: he must be a player, because you can’t throw something like that and not be a player, right?”

Eve with husband Maximillion Cooper and his children. Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images

Cooper proved her wrong. After three years of long-distance dating, Eve moved to London, marrying him and becoming stepmother to his four children. “We definitely went through some growing pains,” she says. “I moved countries, got married, and became a stepmom all at the same time. That took a lot of figuring out my identity.” Cooper had never dated a black woman before, so Eve spent a lot of time educating him and his children about her experiences as a woman of colour. “When we first got together, he thought I was high maintenance because of how often I’d change my hair. I had to say: ‘No, I’m a black woman, this is not high maintenance, this is part of the culture.’ We had a long conversation the other day about when I go to different countries: if people don’t know who I am, then I get questioned a little longer than him. That’s something he never saw before. It’s not that he’s oblivious, he just lives in a different body to me. It’s been nice to be able to open his eyes.”

Did she ever imagine she would be balancing studio sessions with school runs? “Wooo, no child!” she laughs. She accepts most things under her personal mantra: “Have a glass of wine, laugh it off.” A few years ago, she was taking her stepdaughter, Jagger, to a school disco. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to drop her off and get the hell out of there,” she says with a theatrical eye-roll. Unfortunately, her plan backfired. “This woman, she comes over and says: ‘Hi, are you Jagger’s stepmom? We’ve heard so much about you!’” Eve raises her eyebrows. “Then she goes: ‘My husband loves hip-hop. He loves Tupac. Honey, come over! Don’t you just love Tupac?’” She grins. “My life’s a sitcom, but sometimes you just have to laugh.”

Eve’s single Reload (feat Konshens) is out now