now, an irreversible final attempt. tonight, a year-long journey of incredible triple digit weight loss. hip hop's mad man. beyonce is selling cell phones, jay-z hocking lab tops. no, you're not imagining it. suddenly, hip hop artists are everywhere. we meet the hot young mogul making it all main stream. and royal mission. prince william and his wife catherine take on their first big cause together and they want you to join them, in a battle to save hundreds of thousands of children right away. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," november

10th, 2011. >> good evening, i'm terry moran. it's the kind of extreme decision that, if we are lucky, we never face. to risk an irreversible medical procedure in hopes of repairing a chronic health problem and starting life anew. the woman you are about to meet, now 39 years old, came to believe that her weight problems would kill her before she got to see her children marry. so, she took the leap. here's abc's matt gutman with her story. >> reporter: for holly, the breaking point came when her 10-year-old son payton couldn't get his arms around her for a hug. when we first met her last october, holly was more than 200 pounds overweight. she could barely walk, much less keep up with payton, her 11-year-old son tyler and her husband, barry. >> i want to take them to disney and go on rides. i just want to have more energy. i want to keep up with people my age. >> reporter: for as long as she

could remember, holly had been fat. >> i've been fighting with weight since i was 6 years old. i've been on every diet. you name it, i've done it. >> reporter: growing up, she thought her personality could deflect attention from her body size. >> i always tried to be the funny friend, be the funny person, you know? crack jokes so people wouldn't really judge me. >> reporter: she tried to hide the weight in other ways. >> i always volunteered to take the picture or in the back. >> reporter: no medical complications yet. but at 370 pounds, holly was morbidly obese. as a nurse, she knew she had to turn her life around before it was too late. >> i want to be around. i want to meet my grandchildren one day. i want to see my kids, get married. all those milestones, i want to be around for. >> reporter: after years of unsuccessful indicting, holly decided on a strasic measure. a surgery to remove 85% of her stomach permanently. >> we don't want to pull it so

far over. >> reporter: a radical operation that's being conducted for as little as $12,000. >> the beauty of it is that the patients lose weight twice as fast as we have seen with other surgical procedures. >> reporter: that's dr. david tree. >> i've always been on the obese side, not just carrying 20, 30 extra pounds. so, yeah, it's been a long time that i've dealt with it. and i'm ready to not deal with it anymore. i'm ready to deal with other things. >> reporter: in less than an hour and with very little blood, a banana-sized pouch is cut and stapled shut. the remainder is twirled out of a dime-sized hole. what kind of weight do you expect people to lose in the first three months. >> it's not unusual to see a patient lose 100 pounds in six months.

>> reporter: whats goes in the stomach is a hor moment. >> it's a powerful appetite stimulant. most of our patients item us after surgery they're not hungry. ever. >> reporter: this is a newer procedure than traditional surgeries. so new that it's not covered by insurance in most cases. the long-term con consequences are still unknown. the short-term results, however, are stunning. >> i'm melanie. i had my surgery five months ago. i've lost 83 pounds. >> i'm lindsay, i had surgery three and a half months ago and i've lost 66 pounds. >> hi, i'm cindy. i lost 158 pounds in 11 months. >> reporter: for holly, the results are just as striking. >> it's been two months, i lost 50 pounds. >> reporter: her entire relationship to food has changed. peoples are now healthy and every morsel chewed 30 times. >> there's your little plate. can you handle that? >> reporter: before the surgery, how much could you have eaten?

>> probably all of it. >> reporter: the whole plate, six eggs and chicken. one year after her surgery, 135 pounds gone. her portion sizes are still tiny. >> i'm full. i am. yeah. i just had two little pieces of pork and a piece of sausage. >> reporter: but when everyone around her has full plates, she's not tempted. >> if i want a bite of something, i have that taste. i don't let it control me or -- it doesn't consume my thoughts like it used to. >> reporter: for the first time in as long as this 39-year-old can remember, she's excited about something new. shopping. >> i like to try on different things, different colors. things i would have never picked up before. >> reporter: she's gone from a size 30 to a size 18. also shed? many of the inhibitions she says held her back her whole life. >> i always thought i was very outgoing. i thought i had a good personality but i find i'm less

hesitant in social situations. i always would kind of be the girl that stood in the back for the picture. now, i find, i don't feel as uncomfortable socially. >> reporter: and there's an even more important milestone. >> my youngest came up to me the other day and he told me before surgery, i can't wait until i can hug you and my fingers touch. >> reporter: remember when payton's fingers didn't make it around? >> the other day, he hucked me, he said, they touch! just felt so good to be able to feel his hands around my back. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm matt gutman in louisiana. >> that's sweet. thanks to matt for that. just ahead, you're going to meet the mogul bringing hip hop to your commercial break. hohohohohohoholidays? oh i come to the mall, talk about ford. how are you?

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city with terry moran. >> like other stars, the giants of the hip hop world, from jay-z to beyonce have a lot of power to move markets. fans follow their leads on everything from what to wear to what to drink, but now, hip hop's being used to sell products to people who aren't necessarily fans. but who know cool when they see it. and behind it all is one plugged in pitch man. here's abc's deborah roberts. >> reporter: it's a fall night in manhattan and a-listers from every walk of life have turned out for a party thrown by the king of hip hop, jay-z. the bash is in honor of his close friend, steve stoute. and even if you haven't heard of him, you've probably noticed his influence.

beyonce selling cell phones. jay-z's voice for lap tops. >> like a good neighbor, stat farm is there. >> reporter: and lebron james pitching state farm insurance. it's all part of what steve stoute calls the tanning of america. the title of his recently published book. hip hop stars are now status symbols, curators of cool who can sell products not just to black america but to everyone. >> these are all my friends. people who supported me through the rough times. >> reporter: but today, he's the successful ad man behind dozens of multimillion dollar celebrity corporate pairings. how do you know that lady gaga and mac cosmetics -- >> it's obvious. >> reporter: stoute noticed the trend in the mid 's 0s, seeing more and more white faces at hip hop concerts. and the almost color blind impact of urban music. >> amazing thing to see.

why are they dressing like sean "p. diddy" combs? because they wanted the brend. >> reporter: then came the movie "men in black" with will smith's famous line. >> i make this look good. >> and he said, i make these look good and i figured out how much people were buying the shades that he had on. if you put the product in the close proximity with something that's driving pop culture in a way that people believe it, you can sell a lot of products. out of everything else, it needs to be honest. >> reporter: so, at 34, stoute gambled on his future, setting out to introduce corporate america to the influential world of hip hop. he started an ad agency with the fitting name "translation." >> i wanted to take the advertising business and its traditional model and add a bit of pop culture to it. >> reporter: soon, a big break. mcdonald's gave him a shot. >> they were going through tough times and they came one the

campaign "i'm loving it." the executives brought me on, said, could you find a by to ensure that when we launch "i'm loving it" that that tag line is accepted by popular culture? i went to justin timberlake. i thought he would be great because he was one of the great artists in the music business and he was fully tanned. black girls, white girls, no one looked at him through color. >> reporter: he struck gold. "i'm loving it" is mcdonald's longest-running campaign. then, gum looking to update its image called steve. >> and the only thing i remembered about doiremember ed about it was, "double your pleasure, double your fun." i got a song, gave it to chris brown and five months after that, revealed that it was the new wrigley's jingle. and it was a moment run.

>> reporter: suddenly, the tanning of america was real. justin bieber performing with usher. ♪ i just can't >> reporter: linkin park with jay-z. and kids of all colors singing the lyrics. >> hip hop created a culture and the culture it created brought everybody together. >> reporter: celebrities have always endorsed products but today's consumers won't buy a phony sales pitch. >> tiger woods and buick. that's a very clear example of somebody who makes a lot of money every year. why would that person honestly be driving a buick? why? why would you believe that? >> reporter: it's all about being real. something his buddy sean combs has mastered. even he admits he has stoute to thank. >> he was the one that, for us, was the deal maker. he different just make the deal, he helped to 'em power hip hop. he's come in and helped all of

us to make the connections with people that we wouldn't normally make connections with. >> generation that understands that no longer do i have to be what i was told to be, because of my ethnicity. i can be anything i want to be. i can borrow this culture, that culture. i can put them together. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm deborah roberts. [ male announcer ] you'd be shocked how much data you use in a month. e-mail, status updates, finding your way, uploading photos, downloading an app, an app, and another app. kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes... all stacking up until you reach your limit. and what happens if you go over? with sprint, you don't have to worry. only sprint offers truly unlimited data. trouble hearing on the phone? visit sprintrelay.com.

the numbers from the united

nations are devastating. an estimated 13 million people in the horn of africa facing a severe food shortage, almost 1 million refugees from somalia alone. tonight, my co-anchor cynthia mcfadden visits a refugee camp and seeps how two royal newlyweds are trying to help. >> reporter: good evening. we're here in east africa, where a lethal combination of drought, poverty, politics and guns is making an already desperate situation for 13 million people even worse. our week began earlier in copenhagen where perhaps the most famous couple in the world directed our attention here. at a year old, this boy wakes only 14 pounds. beautiful. one of 320,000 children at risk of death here in east africa. there you go. hello. unicef says it needs $30 million by the end of the month to keep aid coming in to save them.

and yet, with everything else that's happening in the world right now, this has been a quiet crisis. the duke and duchess of cambridge decided to try and do something about that. known to americans at prince william and catherine, the couple arrived at uniseven's massive emergency supply warehouse in copenhagen, trailed by hundreds of members of the world press. >> people have lost track of the terrible situation, so i think this hopefully will put the light back on this crisis. >> reporter: they shook hands, they packed boxes. but mostly they got this underreported crisis some much-needed attention. >> it's been going on for at least 100 days now and it's not getting any better. >> reporter: in copenhagen, 50 tons of unicef supplies were loaded on this 747. the flight was donated by british airways. and every member of the flight crew was a volunteer. unicef allowed us to accompany

them. we were on our way to an extreme little remote, extreme limb poor area in the northwestern corner of kenya called turkana. when we arrive at a tiny health center, we are stunned by the enthusiasm in the welcome, despite having so little. people here celebrate what they do have. we're about to deliverer those packages that started in cope copenhagen and end up right here. there are very few doctors. one for ever 50,000 people this is but one of the babies who now has a fragile grip on life. >> getting better. improving. >> reporter: 87 malnourished children under the age of 5 are dependent on this center for survival. as are over 100 pregnant women. an hour away, we're about to witness an unexpected form of famine relief. this unicef school serves 150

families here. and mcclain's brought pencils and notebooks. the idea is that teaching a generation of traditionally nomadic kids to read and write will make them less dependent on a land growing drier every generation. so, when we see the kids learning, i mean, they don't have very full bellies. this is the best tool we have in our arsenal, because this is not a famine crisis, a drought crisis. this is a child survival crisis. >> reporter: with us from the u.s. is peter lamb, an american businessman who brings soccer balls for the kids. one goes to a 14-year-old named alice. alice's mother is here. she holds the youngest of her ten children and she tells us all the kids go to bed without food many nights. we notice the animal skins on the walls. all of her animals have died in

the drought, she tells us. all 50 goats, three don keeps and the camel. what does having an education have to do with the drought? why do you want your children going to school? "with this school," she says, "the children will have a better opportunity." are you hopeful for your children? her eyes glisten with tears. "yes," she says, "with education comes hope." less than 48 hours after the duke and duchess packed those boxes in copenhagen, the first small wave of aid has been safely delivered to people who count on it for survival. little people. whether more help will come in time is up to others. >> thanks to sunt ya mcfadden for that. stay tuned for jimmy kimmel. check in for "good morning america" for an exclusive interview with the mother of penn state molestation victim. and we will see you here tomorrow. >> dicky: up next on