When I first got into hardcore thug beats, I was at a tender and impressionable age. The artists that appealed to me at that time will forever sit on a pedestal in my mind. Without a doubt the most formative album was Dr. Dre’s 2001. Seeing as how the album went platinum 6 times, there’s a good chance that you’re familiar with it and that it had an impact on your music tastes as well. One of the key themes in 2001, as in most rap albums these days, was collaboration. Dr. Dre worked with Enimem, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, and many others. Easily one of my favourite tracks from 2001 was “What’s the difference”, which featured Xzibit and Eminem as they tried to denigrate one another and pretty much everyone else.

Needless to say, Xzibit (a.k.a. X to the Z) was a prominent figure in the music of my early teenage years. It wasn’t until much later in his career that he branched out from music into television and film. His television career is most well-known for his contribution to the MTV show “Pimp My Ride”, which took young individuals who drove some seriously rough cars and transformed the cars into working vehicles again. Of course, there was the token addition of chrome and large diameter wheels, but PMP is best known for putting ridiculous features on vehicles. Features such as ping pong tables and fish tanks come to mind. The idea being that, if the vehicle’s owner likes ping pong, they should be able to play whenever and wherever they want! As noble and altruistic as these ideas were, the outcome of putting $20,000 into a $500 car was never terribly appealing because absolutely no one wants a ping pong table instead of a truck bed. As such, Xzibit is now known as the guy who turned garbage cars into, errr, garbage cars, instead of the foundational rapper he is.

This brings me neatly to the Car Envy POTY, it just nails the whole Pimp My Ride meme that I had to share it with you. Am I the only one who misses the old Xzibit?

[Jalopnik]