Not quite! Anyone who knows me knows that I am far from a fan of rap music. I respect all genres of music, but Rap is not in the forefront for me. Anyway, this past Sunday, music fans who attended the Coachella Music Festival in California got quite a creepy, yet mind-blowing surprise with a sort of live resurrection of the late Tupac Shakur. That's right! The late rapper, who was murdered in a massive drive by shooting in 1996, seemed to have been brought back to life on Sunday night to perform alongside fellow hip-hop icons, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
Don't worry! It wasn't a ghost or anything! While the shirtless Tupac, who was clad in his trademarked tattoos, silver chains, jeans and Timberland boots, might have looked real to the stunned 100,000 shocked music fans, Tupac was actually the work of a hologram. A little eerie? Or was it absolutely brilliant?
Dr. Dre, who also produced the performance, hit up a company called AV Concepts to pull off the concert stunt, which is said to have cost nearly $400,000. Dre was sure to get permission from Tupac's mother, Afeni Shakur, who watched the performance live online, before he embarked on this mind-blowing project.
Fans had mixed feelings about the Tupac hologram performance. Supposedly, pop-Diva, Katy Perry Tweeted that seeing Tupac live almost brought her to tears, while other tweets stated that they were 'totally freaked out by the Tupac hologram." One optimistic tweet read: "Tupac is Alive!" Either way, the Coachella crowd was buzzing with confusion.
The faux Tupac, whose murder still remains unsolved, performed two of his hits, "Hail Mary" and "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted." He even addressed the crowd with "What the fuck is up, Coachella?" upon taking the stage. I'm curious as to how the hell they did that, unless they had a program that manipulated the tone of his voice and had someone read from a script! Either way, I still find this fascinating!
AV Concepts, whose previous clientele included Janet Jackson, Celine Dion, and the Black Eyed Peas, took Dre's visualization of Tupac and just made it a reality. They said that Dre's company provided the content with their partners and they consulted with them on how to create this technology. They went on to say that it was basically an old theatrical trick that utilizes a glass-like surface made out of a large plastic sheet that was stretched out to the length of the stage. Unbeknownst to the audience, the 30-foot-by 13-foot screen descended to the stage mere seconds before Snoop's set. An HD 3-D holographic projection system then simultaneously blasted three stacked 54,000-lumen images of Tupac on the see-through screen making him look like he was actually right there.
I'm not sure what all of you are thinking, but I feel like this opens the door for a lot of cool reunions now! If Vinnie Paul can make up with Phil Anselmo, we can have Panetera back with Dimebag Darrell actually playing guitar by way of a hologram, or how about The Doors with Jim Morrison actually singing by way of a hologram. Better yet, finally a Beatles reunion becomes more realistic without the use of two more bullets. This could be the start of something amazing, yet very, very expensive! If you haven't seen the video footage of this yet, you have to click on the link below. It's unbelievable!
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