Snoop's blunt decision

Snoop Dogg's new track, called Last Dance with Mary Jane, is a mind-bending adventure featuring guest artist Jelly Roll, and a number of cameos including B-Real, Method Man, Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur and Tom Petty.

The song is based on the 1993 track Mary Jane’s Last Dance, by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with the promo directed by Dave Meyers.

Meyers took the near-six-minute track to production company Psyop, which partnered with its newly rostered creative studio Temple Caché. “We immediately knew this was going to be something special – ambitious, experimental and unlike anything seen before in a music video or otherwise,” said Temple Caché Co-Founder and director Marion Castéra. 

The semi-autobiographical story is centred on Snoop Dogg’s lifelong relationship with cannabis and an exploration of personal choice, social injustice and racial disparities. The story follows Snoop as he flies into a surreal world and experiences growing up again, recapturing his different looks throughout his life, before ending the video back in the doctor’s office with a blunt decision to make.

“While the project was ambitious, it was a collaboration like no other," said producer Joe Maggiore, praising the extended team of 30+ artists and animators who brought this vision to life. "Being able to partner with Dre, Snoop and Dave to create a visual style that hasn’t been done is exactly the type of project we live for at Psyop.”  praised the extended team of 30+ artists and animators for “pushing all creative and technical boundaries to bring this vision to life.”

The production team knew they didn’t want a music video that relied solely on any single technique and, with this goal in mind, worked to blend live action, AI and various animation styles, including 2D, 3D, collage and motion design. 

Proprietary AI software developed by Temple Caché, along with other AI programs, were used to ideate characters and shape dreamlike landscapes, yet none of the scenes were totally AI-generated. ”Storytelling requires nuance, from facial expressions to body movements, and AI has yet to master nuance," said Psyop’s Head of Studio Partnerships, Andrew Linsk. "To achieve subtle details and ensure consistency across shots, each frame was touched by human artists – reanimated, composited and layered manually.”