Check out this new music vidomercial from Black Eyed Peas frontman, Will.i.am.  No its not a commercial its actually supposed to be a music video.  Remember back in the day, when a music video meant performing your hit song in front of your hometown’s famous landmark or a blue screen modified to display a cool psychedelic effect?  Well it this current era where the music business is trying to make a comeback with the help of corporate sponsorship, artists are finding it very hard to draw the line in the sand between subsidy and legal music prostitution.

In Will.i.am latest video effort, he clearly gotten carried away with the product placement. Not only is his shiny new Blackberry used for one of those cool picture-in-picture affects, he curiously pulls the phone from the outdoor advertisement mounted inside the bus shelter.  For the better part of the first scene you’re completely bombarded with the Blackberry brand.

One might think that although it may come across a huge sell out by Will.i.am, I’m not too sure the client was ecstatic about the ad either.  Clearly they’ve gotten the point across: “Will.i.am uses blackberry…your dumb ass should too.” but there is a point of what we call in the industry, desensitization.  How much is too much.  As a huge proponent of Corporate sponsorship to bolster the music industry I can’t sit here and claim I know where the threshold of whoredom lie, however I CAN tell you Will.i.am and the jamokes who put this baby together clearly crossed it.