INDIO, Calif. — Eleven years after a mind-blowing hologram of iconic rapper Tupac Shakur took the stage at Coachella to perform with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, reports indicate he’s still just kind of hanging around, not doing much in particular.
“Not gonna lie, it’s pretty damn boring around here,” said the Tupac Hologram, which still appears to be around 25 years old and glowing. “When Dre and Snoop brought me back I thought I’d be going on tour with them or back in the studio to lay down some realness, but it just didn’t pan out. They unplugged me and went about their day. Now I just kind of kick it around here, and I gotta say, Indio is pretty fucking dull when the festival isn’t going on, know what I’m saying? There’s like one bowling alley, and my hands just pass through the balls. I’m lucky if I get the chance to hang at a swap meet.”
Orlando Benson, a Coachella Valley-area receptionist says the Tupac Hologram is well known to locals at this point.
“I was a fan of ‘Pac and was truly crushed so seeing him back up on stage in 2012 felt like a miracle, particularly since I was on a lot of molly at the time,” said Benson. “I guess we all expected that would be the end of that experiment, but nope. Everyone around here just kind of tolerates him now when he comes by work to just ‘hang’ or like ask how iPhones work. Sometimes he just cries, and it makes me wonder what is actually going on. It’s also super creepy when he glitches and his whole face turns into, like, pixels screaming in agony for a few seconds.”
Barry Kovacs, a representative for Goldenvoice, the organization that runs the Coachella Festival, had no explanation for the continued existence of the Tupac Hologram.
“When we contracted AV Concepts to create the Tupac Hologram we thought it would be a fun, one-time thing,” said Kovacs. “We certainly did not expect that we would be creating the world’s first, most bored self-sustaining hard light entity and we sure as fuck don’t know how this is still going on. The hologram isn’t connected to a power supply anymore, he must have rigged up his own battery, I just hope he doesn’t turn violent.”
The actual Tupac Shakur, currently living in the Presidential Palace in Cuba, declined to comment.