Please, let’s the dead be dead, I don’t want to see every single rock star, rapper and other famous person resuscitated around Easter, it’s creepy, exploitative, and totally unnecessary!
As you know, unless you have been living under a rock, Tupac appeared as a ‘hologram’ at Coachella last Sunday during Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre’s set, and he looked better than ever, a killer-abs-gold-cross-around-the-neck-white-boxers-out-of-low-waist-jeans Tupac performing ‘Hail Mary’ solo, then was joined by Snoop Dogg for ‘2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted’ before vanishing in front of the screaming crowd,… even Tupac’s mother did applaud when she watched him on YouTube!
If you are interested, this blog from Denver explains all the details of the making of virtual Tupac by Dr. Dre’s production company (interestingly, it was his idea), in collaboration with James Cameron’s Digital Domain and AV Concepts, and I am not going to deny the brilliance of the technology, but please, don’t do it again, especially with someone I care for.
LA Times’ Randall Roberts called the hologram ‘A red herring, unnecessary and ill advised’, and I totally agree,… what was the point to add Tupar to an already long list of guests? Weren’t the real Wiz Khalifa, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cents and Eminem already enough?
It certainly gave the total freakish illusion it was the real guy rising from the dead, but should we appreciate it? Was it him? No, it was an idea of him reinvented by other people. Since he died in 1996, years before Coachella ever existed, Tupac certainly never said ‘What the fuck is up, Coachella!’ as his hologram did, so someone had to do an impersonation. I wonder how many personalities does Tupac have now, everyone can have a part of him and pretend to be him,… there is even someone who took the occasion to create a @HologramTupac Twitter account at the minute the thing appeared on stage and instantaneously gained 10,000 followers!
What’s wrong with this picture? Well that’s the point, it is a picture, not even made with archive footage, but rather completely created with a computer,… it was an illusion, a puppet, and anyone can be behind it except of course the real Tupac.
However, most of the crowd and YouTube audience LOVED it. Well, they had to, since it was quite pricey technology, according to MTV News, it cost between $100,000 and $400,000!
This is the proof that people are easily fooled, which is very worrisome. For example, Rihanna tweeted during the performance, ‘#TupacBACK #unbelievable #IWASTHERE #STORY4myGrandKidz', which is non-sense! It was not a historic reunion Rihanna, it was not him, he was not there and they are going to do it again next weekend. As a matter of fact, representatives for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg are discussing logistics for a tour with the fake Tupac – at this price, they have to milk the cow to death, if he weren’t already dead – and Rihanna’s grandchildren will probably see holograms every Saturday night.
So what’s next? I predict a Michael Jackson’s appearance (they already did it with Elvis and I shouldn’t be giving a bad idea to Las Vegas’ Cirque du Soleil), a Whitney Houston’s appearance at the next Grammys, and wasn’t a Beatles hologram reunion in the air at one point? I certainly don’t want to see holograms of Harrison and Lennon performing with real McCartney and Ringo Star, what a creepy nightmare!
Concert promoters, stop the illusion, leave this computer-generated-imagery to Hollywood and James Cameron, music should be magic by itself,… and, as the Black Lips tweeted a day after the ghostly appearance (’My Penis saturday was not a hologram U saw it for real in the flesh’) … keep things real for the love of all dead rappers!