Tupac’s ghost: Resurrecting musical icons

Hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur stole the show at the Coachella rock festival in California last week, said Gloria Goodale in The Christian Science Monitor. It was an impressive feat, given that he’s been dead for 16 years. A life-size, computer-generated projection of Tupac appeared on stage, rapping and dancing alongside headliners Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, and leaving the audience gasping and cheering in wonder. Tupac’s “hologram” was not merely a projection of a prior video, but an entirely new, animated creation made possible by a mix of “19th-century mirror tricks” and cutting-edge motion-capture and sound-editing technology. Welcome to a “brave new era of revenue-grabbing, legacy-tarnishing spectacle,” said James Montgomery in MTV.com. Now that one long-deceased musical icon has been virtually exhumed for a new generation of consumers, we can expect more such exploitation. “How long until every hotel in Las Vegas is lining up their own digital Elvis Presleys, Michael Jacksons, or John Lennons for full-blown revues?”

The commercialization of dead pop stars is hardly shocking—or new, said Gautam Malkani in FT.com. Tupac—who was killed in an unsolved drive-by shooting in 1996—has already released “no fewer than eight posthumous albums,” and hip-hop artists from Tupac to 50 Cent have always glorified the pursuit of money. “A subculture that worships materialism was perhaps bound to materialize the immaterial.” Besides, the virtual Tupac is a “less risky brand ambassador” than the real Tupac, a convicted sex abuser involved in various gangland shootings. “It is easier to hero-worship a hologram.”

But no one would, said Russell A. Potter in The New York Times. Fans worshiped Tupac Shakur not just for his talent but also for his rough edges—his feuds with fellow rap stars and his addiction to the “insistent sirens of thug life.” Virtual re-creations may look and sound the same, but they “don’t have the complexity, or the humanity, to really compel our interest.” Still, there are now rumors that a “tour” by Tupac’s ghost will be next, said Mike Osegueda in the Fresno, Calif., Bee. After that, don’t be surprised if you can buy tickets to see the Hologram Beatles, Doors, or Nirvana. And why stop with musical icons? Just imagine how delighted Republicans would be, for example, if a “Hologram Ronald Reagan” could once again run for president. And why not? There are no term limits for digital reincarnations.

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