How Tupac Became a Hologram (Is Elvis Next?)

Tupac Shakur played the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend—at least, a computerized likeness of him did. A hologram of the rapper, who was killed in 1996, appeared on stage and performed two songs 2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted and Hail Mary, alongside his still-living contemporaries Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. At the end of the act, hologram Tupac exploded into an impressive light display.

The performance was the result of a four-month collaboration between Dr. Dre’s production company, James Cameron’s Digital Domain, and two hologram-imaging companies, AV Concepts and U.K.-based Musion Systems. (The latter is responsible for the Gorillaz’s cartoon holograms that performed with Madonna at the 2006 Grammy awards.) Although Tupac is not the first performer to have been posthumously turned into a hologram—in 2009, a digital Frank Sinatra sang at Simon Cowell’s 50 birthday party—he is the first to give a performance that wasn’t rendered while he was alive.