VIDEO: Tupac Shakur Hologram Debuts At Coachella, May Go On Tour

When Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre performed on day three of Coachella on Sunday, they debuted a performing digital hologram of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur on stage that took everyone by surprise and almost instantly dominated the news.

“It was Dre’s vision to bring [Tupac] back to life,” said Nick Smith, the president of AV Concepts, the company that projected the image of Tupac, reports MTV News. “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,” said Smith of the digital Tupac. “You can take their likenesses and voice, … take people that haven’t done concerts before or perform music they haven’t sung and digitally create it.”

That’s exactly what Smith, AV Concepts, and Digital Domain Media Group, Inc. (the company behind Brad Pitt‘s transformation in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which created the visual effect of Tupac) did with the multiple reflections of the 2D-projected image (not quite a hologram, which is technically a 3D-projected image) of Tupac.

But if you missed the debut performance of virtual Tupac that everyone was buzzing about at Coachella, fear not. Snoop and Dre may be taking the new version of their old friend on tour pretty soon, according to the Wall Street Journal. The rappers are looking to kick off a package tour in stadiums that could include such rappers as Eminem and 50 Cent. Tupac, of course, would be the main attraction.

“This is not found footage. This is not archival footage. This is an illusion,” said Digital Domain Media’s chief creative officer, Ed Ulbrich. “This is just the beginning. Dre has a massive vision for this.”