Stoute, you'll recall, is the advertising executive who made a career of connecting the white corporate world with all things hip-hop, a.k.a. "urban," a.k.a. black. His work putting Chris Brown and Wrigley gum together was a shady-looking disaster even before Brown's apparent beating of Rihanna, since Brown wrote a gum endorsement into his hit song without telling fans until after the fact.

Soute said on MSNBC the other day (see clip above) that Brown can get through his big image problem: "We've seen brands move past this before, and celebrities move past this." Indeed: Kobe Bryant beat that rape accusation, as Stoute points out. And some of Brown's fans sound downright eager to get past the Rihanna incident.

But this time there is awful photographic evidence. And the apparent victim doesn't look like she's about to forgive. Brown's not going to get out of this without some sort of catalyst.

A catalyst, let's say, involving someone like Stoute, advertising business partner of reported onetime Brown-hater and Rihanna protecter Jay-Z, going on national television and saying Brown is something other than an unredeemable pariah.

[Ad Age]

First, Mr. Brown updated the [Doublemint "Double your pleasure"] jingle and recorded it with hip-hop producer Polow Da Don. Then, during the same Los Angeles recording sessions in February, paid for by Wrigley, Mr. Brown added new lyrics and made a 4½-minute rendition of the tune, titled "Forever."

In April, Mr. Brown's record label, Jive, released the song to radio stations and digital download services as a single. After the song became a hit, Jive added it to his 2007 album, "Exclusive," and re-released the album in June. "Forever" reached No. 4 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart last week.

This was all done in secret. Tomorrow the company holds a big press conference revealing the whole scam, presumably with the expectation that music fans will clap with delight and declare Wrigley to be their new favorite gum manufacturer. I would suggest that the more fitting response would be a bonfire of Doublemint, angry sloganeering, and boycotts of the company and Chris freaking Brown and his record label.

The man who came up with this whole scheme was, predictably, Steve Stoute, who specializes in hooking up corporate America and "urban" America through terrible marketing partnerships. Although this is certainly the masterpiece of engineered selling-out of Stoute's career.

Here's why this is important: It will be the first of many. It will usher in a new standard way of doing business. It will erode the public's expectation of what "music" is. In a few years, kids won't see any problem with the fact that all of their favorite songs are ads for one company or another. The very idea that music—pop music, anyhow—could be created purely for the sake of artistic expression will be antiquated.

And who does it hurt? THE CHILDREN. This is insidious shit. Huge corporations are reaching out to children by buying up their favorite musicians in secret. As saddening as it is to see an artist you like do a regular commercial for some crappy product, its ten times sadder to see them spring it on you after their song has already become a hit.

This is not about a naive belief that pop music is untainted by any commercial concerns. This is about the simple desire to be able to listen to any new music and be secure in the knowledge that it's not an undercover ad. They come for the bad pop music first. Then they come for the music that you like. You think that your favorite indie bands and underground rappers won't be subjected to this same tactic as soon as it proves successful? Ha. This is one tactic that just can't be justified. At least tell us we're being sold to, you shameless, soulless corporate apologists. Some people still believe that music is worth something by itself.

Boycott Wrigley, please.

[WSJ. You can contact Wrigley here.]

Stoute is record exec and hip hop manager who figured out this dynamic early. He started a company called Translation Consulting & Brand Imaging that basically involved a large corporation— Reebok, or HP, or GM— coming to him and saying, "Who should we get for our BRAND IMAGE?" He would think for a second and reply, "How about.. Jay-Z?" Then the company would pay him an outrageous fee. And when he got tired of that last year, he sold the agency to Interpublic, a huge marketing firm holding company, for $10-15 million.

Now, he's teaming up with Jay-Z to start an ad agency called (dramatic pause) Translation Advertising! An accurate summary of what Jay-Z will be doing on a day to day basis for the agency is "nothing." Or as the New York Times puts it, he will "offer his creative and entrepreneurial ideas." An accurate summary of what Steve Stoute will be doing is, pretty much the same thing he was doing before. Which is to say, sitting in a meeting room with white business executives and making them feel cool enough to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars to him. Now that Jay-Z is in-house, Stoute can just point across the room to signal his strategic branding ideas.

What do his dozens of employees do all day? Not work on the website, apparently. It doesn't really matter. You have to applaud Steve Stoute for his success in bringing the vague, undefined hustling role of a music manager into the corporate boardroom, and increasing his salary by a factor of ten. Jay-Z is rich enough not to even need a cushy job like this, but you can see why he's there: If Stoute ever gets attacked by a rap mogul again, Jay-Z can stab the offender. He has the experience.

Mr. Stoute, we salute your moxie. Your career is a lot like blogging: It has a low bar to entry; a high rate of failure; and even great financial success is no guarantee that the product's not crap.