It's Hard out Here for a Pimp

"It's Hard out Here for a Pimp" is a song written by American hip hop group Three 6 Mafia, alongside Cedric Coleman, as the theme song to the American drama film Hustle & Flow (2005).^[1] It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and in 2006 was ranked number 80 on VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop".^[2]

Background

The song was performed in Hustle & Flow by Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson as their respective characters DJay and Shug. Three 6 Mafia included their own version of the song with vocalist Paula Campbell on a 2006 special edition reissue of their platinum album Most Known Unknown.

In 2015, Howard and Henson competed against each other in the Season 1 finale of the Spike series Lip Sync Battle and, by popular demand, performed the song as the first duet by competitors in the show's history.^[3]

78th Academy Awards

At the 78th Academy Awards in 2006, Three 6 Mafia and Henson performed the song shortly before it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.^[1][4] Howard did not wish to perform at the ceremony, and since two of the song's writers are themselves artists in the form of the trio Three 6 Mafia, they were given the opportunity to perform it. Three 6 Mafia became the first hip hop group to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and the first hip hop artists to perform at the ceremony.^[5] It was the second hip hop song to win an Oscar, after Eminem's "Lose Yourself" from the film 8 Mile (2002).^[1]

This song became the third in five years to win the Oscar without a Golden Globe Award nomination. The others were "If I Didn't Have You" from Monsters, Inc. (2001) and "Al Otro Lado del Río" from The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).

References

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• 2006 Oscars handed out at Kodak Theatre