Holographic Tupac Shakur Performs Live With Snoop, Makes Star Wars Holo-Tech Look Stupid

By Joshua Tyler | Updated 5 years ago

This article is more than 2 years old

The future is now. Tupac Shakur has been dead since 1996, but that didn’t stop him from performing live on stage at the Coachella music festival Sunday night.

In the closing set of the three-day performance Tupac reportedly appeared, thanks to a state of the art hologram created by Dr. Dre and the same special effects company that created CGI versions of Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Here’s Holo Tupac in action…

As you can see Holo Tupac appeared on stage, looking completely real, raised his arms and shouted, “What the fuck is up, Coachella?!” He then performed Shakur’s “Hail Mary” solo, and then did a duet on “Amerikaz Most Wanted” with a very not holographic Snoop Dogg. The audience reaction sounds pleasantly surprised, but unless they were expecting this, that seems almost like underplaying it. Shouldn’t have people been fainting or something? Did they know this wasn’t actually Tupac? How could they? It looks too real.

Dre apparently spared no expense on the special effect. Yahoo says the hologram cost somewhere in the low six figures to produce. Estimates seem to range from $100,000 – $400,000. Even if he paid a full half-million, I’d say Dre got his money’s worth.

I don’t think we’ve ever seen holographic technology used on this level before, at least outside of science fiction. This is Star Wars level technology we’re talking about here. Scratch that, it’s better. Those holographic broadcasts of the Emperor always looked a little grainy when he reached out to hassle Darth Vader. This made it look like Tupac was actually standing there on stage.

Here’s the best the Emperor could manage…