In my post on the Hologram Tupac yesterday, I made a joke about slimy music industry people seeing dollar signs in this sort of technology and that we shouldn’t be surprised when dead artist hologram tours start happening. Well, I’m afraid we’ve opened a door that can’t be closed and it’s already happening.
Moving forward with discussions of a tour are representatives for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg who, according to a source close to the project, will be meeting to discuss the logistics involved in scheduling a string of performances with the virtual Tupac. The report cites one option would be to tour in stadiums and involve other hip-hop stars like Eminem, 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa. Another option is a limited tour that would only feature Dre, Snoop Dogg and the virtual Tupac in smaller arenas.
“We worked with Dr. Dre on this, and it was Dre’s vision to bring this back to life,” Nick Smith — president of AV Concepts, the San Diego company that projected and staged the image — exclusively told MTV News on Monday (April 16). “It was his idea from the very beginning and we worked with him and his camp to utilize the technology to make it come to life. … You can take their likenesses and voice and … take people that haven’t done concerts before or perform music they haven’t sung and digitally re-create it.”
“This is not found footage. This is not archival footage. This is an illusion [and] this is just the beginning,” Ulbrich told the Journal. “Dre has a massive vision for this.”
You know what — Dr. Dre and his “massive vision,” along with his crappy, overpriced headphones, can f*ck off. This is just creepy and shameful, not to mention disrespectful to younger, up-and-coming artists who could use the opportunity to tour with someone like Dre rather than a circus freakshow in the form of hologram of a rapper who’s been dead for 15 years. Why stop at Tupac — why not toss in holograms of Michael Jackson, Elvis, Kurt Cobain and Whitney Houston while you’re at it? If you’re gonna go all P.T. Barnum on us, go all in with the sh*t. To hell with nourishing and developing new talent — just recycle dead performers over and over until the end of time.
Meanwhile, I don’t think I want to live on this planet anymore.
(GIF via Best Roof Talk Ever)
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Is this April the 1st? PLEASE TELL ME IT IS!
Please let them call it the Holla Gram Tour
And don’t call it a comeback, he’s been here for years.
Wait, that’s LL, I think.
I don’t think it’s much of an issue. Although I enjoy the music of all parties mentioned I’d be hard pressed to say that they’ve made any real attention grabbing music in over a decade. Most people aren’t interested in new/unique/interesting music so if they want facsimiles why not provide? I see little difference between a hologram of Tupac and going to see the Stones today and the only new artist that Dre would be likely to help on the way up today would probably be more of the same. In fact, they could just make holograms of all of them and then they could play on-demand concerts! They could save so much money on touring costs! People around the world could enjoy the whold “tour” in one night! That topic would be so trending!!
This is a good thing.
Okay, I got pretty silly there, but my point is having a hologram Tupac doesn’t seem any more shameless than posthumously releasing piles of crappy verses that Pac wouldn’t have wanted us to. And good new music has to be discovered the hard way. We can’t expect Dre to hand it to us.