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Snoop Dogg is too fucking cool.
After fading from the charts, Coolio has devoted much of his time to charities: he's put off recording a new album to do a series of USO tours (!), playing for servicemen. He's also done a bunch of TV game shows to raise money for charity, like Celebrity Fear Factor, wherein he dunked his head in a tank full of scorpions to raise $75,000 for Goodwill and for various groups that promote literacy.
It is interesting, though: The Smoking Gun did an exposé on celebrities' foundations which included a long list of stars, from across the spectrum of arts—and the only hip-hop figure on their list was Will Smith. The most telling thing, though, was the company he kept: he was lumped in with "New Hollywood," suggesting that he belongs more to movie-star culture, which has always placed a high emphasis on charity, than to hip-hop culture.
That said, there are two kinds of showbiz charity: systematic charity, such as setting up foundations or corporations (Paul Newman's phenomenally successful food line comes to mind)—which tend to be more low-profile—and one-offs—that is, benefit concerts, auctions, "events" and the like, which tend to promote the artist's career as much as the charity in question.
Coaching Pee-Wee football is about as low-key as it gets, but in the end it probably makes more of a difference to individual lives than, say, donating 10% or receipts from a pay-per-view cable concert. |
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