D to the O to the double G, phoning it in from the LBC

I love Snoop Dogg, don't get me wrong. He's sublimely talented, and his presence as a guest on another person's track is often the kiss of life where its artistic success and acclaim would otherwise sag.

But what the hell is with him lately?

(Note: this is about music, not videos... so you will need sound and a strong stomach.)

I give you his patron cameo on Will-I-Am's "The Donque Song" (a song that could be improved either by leaving out the female "talent" and Snoop's phoned-in performance entirely, or by inserting the barrel-chucking sound from Donque Kong. (Evidently this is how we spell it now.)

And now, I give you something even worse... the "clean" (um... no) version of his inane crapbabble new song, "Sexual Eruption." To make it even less sensical, but not at all clean, the title and most of the lyrics have been amended to "Sensual Seduction."

Ugh.

The seventies are back, folks. But not the good part. Nope, we're all out of funk. Instead, it's the soulless, coked-up bump and grind and explicit tastelessness that ruined the fun for all of us, bringing us an era of shoulderpads and misguided economics.

Okay, I admit "the Donque Song" is kind of catchy....... dammit. (But when you have to computer modulate someone's voice to make their 4 word participation on a song in order to bring them up to a low simmer of suckage, you might just opt to leave them out... and honestly, haven't we heard Snoop's rap before in several chunks? While from a literary standpoint it's darn cool to see almost Skaldic or Old English types of formulaic poetry arise popularly, one does tend to recall Orwell's versificator...)

I blame you, Dogg.

(Actually, I might blame Paula Deen. While never the vanguard of health food or lucidity, she has gone plumb batshit mad and is now regularly deep-frying lard between hits off her hash pipe or whatever else it is that makes her lose battles of wits with Kermit the frog, twist Refrigerator Perry's nipples and worship his manliness, and make out with her son. WTF?! Yes, I'm talking about the Thanksgiving special. Julia Child, at her most drunken and butter-loving, was never quite the incarnation of 1977 that Paula Deen has become. Hell, Graham Kerr in his Galloping Gourmet days was less excessive, and he was about two steps from Mr. Roeper.)

Okay, rant over. But please, no. I don't care if you bring back hipster pants, diagonal stripes, cowboy fringe, or lounge suits. I kind of want the 'fro to come back. And I like funk and disco. But somebody needs to put away the time machine that opens onto the bowels of Hell.