Dr. Dre Refutes 2Pac Hologram Tour Rumor

The Internet was set ablaze last weekend when footage of a 2Pac hologram performing alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre hit YouTube. Talk spread that the revolutionary appearance would be just one in a string for the late 'Pac, as rumors of a tour surfaced. This past weekend, at the second weekend of the California music festival, though, Dre put those possibilities to rest.

"As you know, we had a hologram of Tupac Shakur show up as a part of our show, and I want to thank a couple of companies out there that made my idea come to life," the West Coast pioneer began in a message to his fans, posted on the YouTube page of Interscope Records, where he is signed. "I wanna say what's up to AV Concepts, who actually projected the hologram; I wanna say what's up to Digital Domain for actually putting the image together—they did an incredible job and everybody out there loved it.

“It was strictly for Coachella—get it right,” Dre added. “I wanna get rid of all the rumors out there…this was not done for a tour. If a tour happens? We'll see. This was done strictly for Coachella 2012, baby. Just for you."

Last week, a source told the Wall Street Journal that there were discussions underway regarding the possibility of bringing the legendary rapper on tour. “This is just the beginning,” Ed Ulbrich, the Chief Creative Officer of Digital Domain, the company responsible for the 2-D hologram at Coachella, told the paper. “To create a completely synthetic human being is the most complicated thing that can be done. This is not sound footage. This is not archival footage. This is an illusion.”

When the initial performance went down a little over a week ago, hip-hop took to Twitter and expressed an overwhelmingly positive response to the incident. "That Was The Best Shit I Seen In My Life," Wiz Khalifa wrote. Hit-Boy echoed those sentiments, writing, "That was one of the illest things I've ever seen."—Adam Fleischer