Wired & Weird: Coachella 2012: Tupac hologram brings back the ‘Gangster Party'

By Charles Scott, clscott@smu.edu 

Tupac is back! (Well, kind of.)

Coachella goers were treated to the unexpected Sunday night when the late Tupac Shakur came on stage during a performance.

Festivalgoers saw a realistic 3D-animated hologram of Shakur on stage for two songs, one of which was the famous duet called ‘Gangster Party’ where he performed with the still-living half of the “America’s most wanted” duo, Snoop Dogg.

From the video, it seems as though the hologram of Shakur was synced with audio clips from past performances when the artist was still living.

A number of post-mortem albums have been released under Shakur’s name, but Sunday was the first of his live performances since his sudden, and unexplained death, in 1996.

This wasn’t the first time hologram technology has been used. Celine Dion performed a duet with a hologram of the late Elvis Presley during American Idol in 2007.

The question is: Will people start making more attempts at resurrecting other famous acts? Would you pay to see Jim Morrison hop around the stage with The Doors? Or, how about getting ‘hypnotized’ by the Notorious B.I.G. and Junior Mafia? What about the ‘thrill’ of Michael Jackson?

It’s a shame that more of this stuff hasn’t popped up. And it’s unfortunate that we were all in class and couldn’t get a glimpse of what must have surely been the best “gangster party” in decades.