After Tupac was resurrected after being dead for 15 years in the form of an extremely lifelike hologram at Coachella, rap enthusiasts and technology nerds alike collectively freaked out.
Video clips of “Tupac’s” performance with Snoop Dogg have been viewed over 8 million times on YouTube, and the terms “Tupac,” “hologram” and “Tupac Shakur” remain among the top eight most searched Google terms.
Now, the popularity of the beloved rapper’s reemergence has created rumors that Hologram Tupac will go on tour.
Ed Ulbrich, chief executive officer of Digital Domain — the company that created the eerily realistic Tupac hologram — hinted to the Wall Street Journal that the rapper could appear onstage again.
“This is just the beginning,” Ulbrich said. “Dre has a massive vision for this.” Dr. Dre’s representative did not comment for the article, but it’s safe to say that if Hologram Tupac went on tour, people would go see him perform.
An unnamed source told the WSJ that a tour was likely, but that it would take months of technical planning to move forward. The source said that a big arena tour with other performers such as Eminem, 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa is a possibility, but that it could also be a smaller tour featuring just Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and virtual Tupac.
Tupac is the first entertainer to be resurrected in this format, which is technically not a hologram, as it has been widely referred to, but a 2-D image.
Could this be the first of many entertainers brought back from the dead? It’s a safe bet that we could see a Whitney Houston resurrection performance sometime soon. Because the holograms are relatively cheap to create — around $400,000 — we highly doubt this is the last dead rapper to perform live.
Tupac was fatally shot in the head in Las Vegas 15 years ago, at the age of 25. His murder has never been solved.
