A few years ago, West Coast Customs—the auto repair and body shop featured on the early-aughts MTV series Pimp My Ride—was outed for adding fake or faulty accessories to the cars they claimed to have pimped out, and also for instructing the young people featured on the show how to act.
The show’s host, “X to the Z” Xzibit, wants you to know that he had absolutely nothing to do with the cars featured on the show or the drama that unfolded.
In an interview with HipHopDX, the rapper said that he only signed on to host the show, which ran from 2004 to 2007, because he wanted MTV to play his music videos (remember those?). However, Xzibit’s mass appeal during the time was absolutely worth it, noting that “soccer moms that don’t give a fuck” about him were talking about the show. However, he wishes that people would stop talking to him about cars.
“You’ve never seen me fix shit on the show!” he laughs, admitting that he had no greater knowledge about cars than the rest of us. “I don’t fix shit...you saw me at the beginning and you saw me at the end. I know as much as you do...I put gas in the motherfucker, and I drive it. If it don’t start, I take it to the same place you do.”
According to a report from the Huff Post in 2014, MTV and West Coast Customs’ customization specialist Mad Mike would do what they could to rectify issues with the cars, such as wiring problems, however, a lot of the problems were more serious, such as installing a fake exhaust pipe when a car really needed a muffler. One car featured on the show in 2015 actually ended up bursting into flames.
“I was not responsible for none of that shit,” Xzibit says while maintaining his innocence. “I would be just as disappointed as the motherfucker getting the car, and here’s the thing: I was the face of the show...people associate me with what happened with the cars. I didn’t do shit to the car! I didn’t do none of that shit.”
There you have it.