In a surprising career 360, Snoop Dogg—or Snoop Doggy Dogg, or Calvin Broadus— the former Crip who was tried as an accomplice to murder, has decided to turn his pot-dulled energies against a different sort of foe: Internet hackers. It's all very crimes-against-Capitalism circa Angelina Jolie with asymmetrical hair in Hackers, and would be laughable and dated if it weren't also a pretty depressing. The Hack is Wack project invites wannabe-MC’s to create anti-hacking hip-hop videos. The winner gets free tickets to a Snoop concert and some other cool stuff. My guess is he’s simply being paid a lot of money to do essentially nothing.

Snoop's the latest example of the continuing trend of corporate kiss-upping among formerly “edgy” musicians. David Berman, brainchild of the exceptionally great indie cult band Silver Jews, gave a talk in July at the Open City Summer Writing Workshop about his decision to quit making music in a scene that must kowtow to big corporations for the sake of its survival. He’s right. With album sales at record lows and largely un-policed piracy (which is maybe what Snoop is really trying to stop?) rampant, artists become more and more reliant on corporate sponsorship, doing songs for TV shows and advertisements in order to make end’s meet. We’ve come a long way from the punk ethos, and I think music has suffered. Still, as Sasha Frere-Jones recently pointed out, many bands have taken advantage of the web’s viral capabilities in order to popularize their music without record label dollars.

Artists like Snoop are supposed to be gangstas, not goody-goody hack-haters. I wonder what his fellow Crips think. At the very least, we get some pretty unintentionally hilarious music videos out of the whole thing, like this one.