Tupac Live at Coachella?

By Cam on May 12, 2012

So this is one of the coolest things ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5CU5rTzpP8&feature=youtu.be

That’s a hologram of Tupac Shakur himself performing for the crowd at Coachella…a few days ago! This is a pretty amazing testament to how far technology has come. The hologram was created by James Cameron’s production house Digital Domain and hologram companies AV Concepts and Musion Systems. The image is scarily real, keeping his abs looking perfect as he struts across the stage, but moments when his feet glide across the ground and a few flickers still produce that supernatural, ghost-like feeling. I can relate to anyone in that crowd who flipped out when they first saw it; the image was supposed to be of recently deceased rapper Nate Dogg but the image was changed last minute in fear of possible outrage.

Perhaps the swap was a blessing in disguise, because the 4-minute video is certainly a treat for Tupac fans and fans of the hip-hop genre in general. The songs they chose, “Hail Mary” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” are performed well, the latter of which the actual Snoop Dogg performed alongside his digital companion. This leads to the odd question of how Snoop feels about rapping with a projection.

I only wonder if holographic performances like this are going to become “a thing”, something that can become the next big fad. We’ve seen this kind of thing before with Madonna and the Gorrillaz at the ’06 Grammys and I just recently learned of Hatsune Miku, a completely 3D pop-star hologram, not even a real person, who has a big concert following in Japan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI&feature=player_embedded

And people say Japan is one of the technological cusps of the world…What will they think of next?

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