In the game, players are challenged to pimp out their customers' cars by Xzibit, transforming something old and rusty into something worthy of displaying on the streets.

To raise cash for pimping a customer's car, players can crash into other cars, play minigames, which include "Hot Steppin'", a rhythm game, and "Ghost Ride the Whip", where the player must press buttons in time, greet people by driving slowly, and pressing buttons, collect cash tokens that spell out "P-I-M-P-!

When pimping a car, the player will compete with another customizer, and whoever scores the highest wins.

Alex Navarro of GameSpot described the PSP version as having a "nauseatingly choppy frame rate" and commented that the game crashed "on a semi-regular basis... thus corrupting or killing your save file", summing up by saying that "there is no version of Pimp My Ride worth recommending to anyone, but the PSP version is definitely the one that should be most actively avoided".

[4] A sequel named Pimp My Ride: Street Racing, developed by Virtuos and published by Activision, was released in 2009 for PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS.