Anatomy of a P.I.M.P.: Detroit's unlikely connection to a French Best Picture nominee

A French courtroom drama isn't the first place you'd expect to hear 50 Cent's "P.I.M.P." But the bombastic 2003 hit plays a key role in the film, which is nominated for five Academy Awards — including Best Picture — at Sunday's Oscars.

The version that's used is an instrumental cover of the original, with horns replacing 50's lyrics, turning the Caribbean-themed hip-hop anthem into a sort of free-associative instrumental jam session. And it's played loud, so loud that it becomes a plot point, and the fact that it's used multiple times throughout the movie makes it rattle around in viewers' heads long after the end credits roll. It's inescapable, and it may be the defining musical moment from any film released in 2023 that doesn't involve Ryan Gosling belting out in "Barbie."

The cover comes from the Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, a funk ensemble hailing from Hamburg, Germany, who recorded it in 2008. But the original "P.I.M.P." instrumental was born in a Detroit basement, where Denaun Porter produced it in the early 2000s, before 50 Cent rapped over it on his debut album "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" and turned it into a worldwide smash.

Porter is a film buff in his own right, although he prefers effects-driven superhero extravaganzas to French legal thrillers. But "Anatomy of a Fall" drew him in, mostly due to its over-the-top usage of the song he cooked up locally nearly a quarter century ago.

"They did a version that was so obnoxious that it was great," says Porter, who watched "Anatomy of a Fall" for the first time last week. "They nailed it."

But what he was most impressed with isn't the use of the song, which he had to clear the rights to so it could be used in the film, but rather the length of time it's used in the movie.

"The Oscars and all that stuff is cool," he says. "But can I get in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest synced song in a movie? Because I've never seen anybody use a sync for that long!"

Porter, 45, says he receives a fair number of asks for clearances of the song, and he's typically pretty stringent with giving greenlights. But he says he recently OK'd another high profile request for its usage, which came from producers of the Academy Awards, so don't be surprised if "P.I.M.P." winds up working its way into Sunday's telecast.

Made in Detroit

Porter is a key piece in Detroit's hip-hop puzzle, and has been linked with Eminem since before Em ascended hip-hop's ranks. He produced 10 of the 11 tracks on "Infinite," Eminem's pre-fame 1996 debut album.

When Eminem blew up in 1999, Porter was by his side, and was part of his D12 posse, where he rapped under the name Kon Artis. His productions were used throughout "Devil's Night," D12's 2001 debut album, and Porter became a protégé of hip-hop superproducer — and Em's mentor — Dr. Dre.

He was making tracks in the early 2000s and was working with a young Detroit engineer, Brandon "Dirtybird" Parrott, who came to him with the steel pan rhythm pattern that makes up the backbone of the "P.I.M.P." instrumental. Porter liked what he heard and went to work on it, beefing up the drums, giving it more low end and sonically enhancing it, he says. "I'm really good at making things better because I'm a producer, not a beat maker. You know what I mean?"

The track, initially known as "BAMBA," was one of about a dozen songs Porter worked on that day in the basement of his parents' Conner Creek home, just off Eight Mile on Detroit's east side, and it was eventually shipped off to Dr. Dre. Cut to a few years later when 50 Cent was working on his debut album, released on Eminem's Shady Records and executive produced by Dre, and the instrumental became "P.I.M.P.," 50's tropically flavored, brag-filled ode to his own grandiosity.

The song is one of 16 tracks on "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," which was released in February 2003 and sold nearly 1.7 million copies its first two weeks in stores. "P.I.M.P." was released that summer as the album's third single, and it reached No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, where it was outpaced by Chingy's "Right Thurr" and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," which was wrapping up its eight week run at No. 1. (The first two singles off "Get Rich," "In Da Club" and "21 Questions," spent a combined 13 weeks at No. 1.) A "P.I.M.P." remix followed, featuring Snoop Dogg — for whom the track was originally earmarked — along with 50's G-Unit pals Lloyd Banks and Young Buck.

Porter received a sole producing credit on the song — Parrott received a songwriting credit — but a fallout over royalties led to the dissolvement of Porter and Parrott's personal and professional relationship, which Porter says still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. A 2016 lawsuit over rights to the song, in which Parrott claimed fraud and copyright infringement, was dismissed.

Porter went on to produce "Stunt 101" for 50's G-Unit crew, using a drum sound he says he modeled after Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight." He has also produced tracks for Busta Rhymes, DMX, Method Man, Lil Kim, Snoop Dogg, Royce 5'9" and many others, and last week he released "By the Time You Look Up N.C. What We Doin'," the debut project from his group Read the PDF, alongside fellow Dr. Dre cohorts Focus... and Dem Jointz.

"P.I.M.P." is still his most commercially successful track, and he thought nothing of it when, in 2008, he cleared it for use by a relatively unknown German funk outfit.

Trading Dolly for 50

Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band's version of "P.I.M.P." is so faithful to the original, and so organic sounding, that you'd be forgiven for thinking that their version came out in the mid-1970s and 50 Cent's version was lifted from it.

It first pops up less than three minutes into "Anatomy of a Fall," in which a woman's husband dies under mysterious circumstances and she's put on trial for his murder. It's not so much a whodunnit as it is an unraveling of the couple's marriage and relationship dynamics, wrapped in the shell of a mystery. (It also features a scene-stealing dog named Snoop.)

"Anatomy of a Fall," which won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, was released in North American theaters in October and grossed around $31 million worldwide. At the Oscars, in addition to Best Picture, it's also nominated for Best Actress (for Sandra Hüller), Best Director (for Justine Triet), Best Original Screenplay (for Justine Triet and Arthur Harari) and Best Editing (for Laurent Sénéchal).

In the movie's opening scene, "P.I.M.P." plays unbroken for nearly three and-a-half minutes, while Hüller's character is being interviewed about her work and her husband blares it from an upstairs bedroom in a fit of passive aggression. It then shows up again about 50 minutes later where it is played in a courtroom, in an audio recording of the events of the first scene, for an additional 45 seconds. (It's a lot of "P.I.M.P.," to be sure, but Porter doesn't have a case as far as the Guinness Book is involved; Rob Zombie, for example, used a five and-a-half minute piece of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" in 2005's "The Devil's Rejects.")

Thibault Deboaisne is the Paris-based music supervisor who worked on "Anatomy of a Fall." He says the film's original script called for Dolly Parton's "Jolene," and when the usage of that song was denied, director Triet swung the pendulum in a wildly different direction toward "P.I.M.P."

Deboaisne says the power of the "P.I.M.P." instrumental and its placement in the movie is that it's so unexpected.

"It's quite surprising," says Deboaisne. "And it's very powerful. At the same time it's very interesting because we don't hear the lyrics, we just focus on this Caribbean production."

It's also a huge contrast from the film's setting, a chateau in the French Alps, which Deboaisne says adds to the mystique of the song and its deployment in the film. It's also provides a glimpse into the dynamics of the movie's characters: What type of person would blare a cover of "P.I.M.P." in their own home while his wife was downstairs trying to conduct an interview?

Porter couldn't believe the reveal of the man who was playing the song, an average looking French guy dressed meekly in a sweater. "This guy looked like a doctor. Why are you playing this song?" Porter says, laughing. "That s--- was wild, bro. It's crazy."

Since the release of "Anatomy of a Fall" and the focus it put on the Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, the group has gone back to the 50 well; last year, it released a cover of 50 Cent and The Game's "How We Do," and also worked up versions of Dre's "Nuthin' But a G Thang" and Drake's "Hotline Bling." (The group's 2016 album, "55," includes a cover of Detroiter Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio.")

"Anatomy of a Fall" isn't the only 2023 movie to feature "P.I.M.P." — 50's original version was used in "Expend4bles," which starred 50 Cent, creating a strange vortex where 50's character, Easy Day, exists in a world where 50 Cent's music also exists — but it is the most memorable, and led to a moment perhaps bigger than the movie itself.

Despite the personal fallout he experienced from the song, Porter says it represented an amazing moment both for him and for hip-hop in general.

"'P.I.M.P.' will never happen again because 50 was the last anomaly like that," he says. "I'm glad I was a part of the process of the production of that album. It was a giant moment, and you don't get those moments often."

And as "Anatomy of a Fall" shows, when those moments happen, you never know who is listening.

agraham@detroitnews.com

96th Academy Awards

7 p.m. Sunday

ABC