Pimp My Ride

The MTV car show that taught America to use "pimp" as a verb meaning to decorate.

Pimp My Ride ran on MTV from 4 March 2004 to 9 June 2007, six seasons and 73 episodes, hosted by the Los Angeles rapper Xzibit. The format never changed: Xzibit surprises a young owner of a wreck, the car goes to a custom shop (West Coast Customs in Corona for seasons one to four, Galpin Auto Sports in Van Nuys after that), and comes back with new paint, screens, speakers and a gimmick matched to the owner's hobby. The show was licensed abroad, from Britain to Brazil, and its catchphrases outlived it as internet jokes.

Its place in this archive is linguistic. "Pimp" as a noun for a man who lives off women's prostitution dates to about 1600; the lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, writing in Slate in 2008, traced the newer sense, to customise or decorate something flashily, through hip-hop slang to the point where MTV's show "mainstreamed" it for audiences who had never heard the street usage. Older speakers found any positive use sexist; younger ones heard it as neutral. The show is why a suburban teenager could "pimp" a bedroom without thinking of the trade at all.

The production was also less real than it looked. Former participants told The Huffington Post in 2015 that the doorstep surprises were staged at rented houses, that reactions were reshot, and that features such as champagne dispensers and a drive-in screen were removed after filming; a co-executive producer said removals were "for safety reasons."

ALSO KNOWN AS
Hosted by Xzibit (Alvin Nathaniel Joiner)

ERA
2004–2007

ASSOCIATED WITH
MTV; Xzibit; West Coast Customs; Galpin Auto Sports; Los Angeles

STANDING
Documented