Welcome to Rap Town

(A picture of the Tupac “hologram” on the big screen, taken by me, because I was there, about 100 ft. back from the stage at Coachella, April 16, 2012.)

I was not there when Tupac was shot and killed, and I don’t have a good story about where I was when I heard that he had died. Actually, it’s sort of a copout: I was sitting on my parents couch in suburban New Jersey watching “VH1’s Behind the Music: The Notorious B.I.G.”

You have to understand that I was still a really little kid the year that they got ‘Pac, 1996. It wasn’t a big deal to me then. Something happened, I missed it, life moved on.

But since his death and, subsequently, my learning of his death, things haven’t actually moved on that much: Tupac’s legacy has taken on the stuff of legend, effectively positioning him, alongside Biggie— arguably the patron saint of the east coast—as one of not just the best rapper of all time, but as a martyr and one of the most important people of the last century.

So you can imagine that it was sort of a shock when, this past Sunday night, I saw Tupac in concert. See, this past weekend I made hipster hajj to the arid heart of corporate-sponsored “indie” music that is the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival. It had been a long time coming, and, as much as my cred’ might take a beating to admit this, it was sort of life changing.

It was basically best time ever, and everything you’ve heard about it is true—the good and the bad and the ridiculous.

I pretty much saw most of my favorite artists perform pretty much most of my favorite songs in one weekend. I witnessed a man have sex with his guitar. I got sage advice from a guy who was high out of his mind, wearing a banana suit. I watched a group of 14 year olds drop E at 3:00pm. I saw a couple try to copulate in the middle of a huge crowd waiting for a bearded folk singer-cum-rockstar to take the main stage, and then witnessed the selfsame bearded folk singer realize that he is, in fact, a bona fide rock star. I learned a lot about myself (I enjoy fun things), and music (it’s great and I love it and when it’s outside on polo grounds in California in the desert with pretty good weather it’s even better, especially with 75,000 of my newest, closest friends and a guy, rolling on the love drug, dressed as a piece of fruit), and the word “swag” (it’s dead), and breasts (everyone in California has them and they all want to show as much of them off as possible).

And I also saw a hologram of the late Tupac Shakur scare the ever-loving god out of a field of 75,000 stoned, middle class kids who turned out to see the reclusive Dr. Dre and our last living national treasure, Snoop Dogg, perform their greatest hits with their closest “friends.”

Since the “hologram” (actually a 3-D rendering projected on a 2-D mylar surface, if we’re going to get technical) materialized on stage Sunday night every internet pundit has weighed in on the occurrence, and Twitter went totally nuts.

But they weren’t there.

I was there.

I’m not here to expound on the consequences of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s decision to resurrect their late colleague through technology.

I don’t plan to explain the experience.

I won’t take you through the train of thought that ran—obscured and obstructed by the thick, inescapable, hazy layer of smoke that hung over the festival grounds, silently answering the performers’ inquiries as to whether or not marijuana was being consumed, complying with their pleas for their audience to “smoke weed every day” and “put it in the air”—from “who will the next guest be?” at the first appearance of the illusion-Tupac’s head, to “seriously? A holographic projection of Tupac Shakur is perform ‘Hail Mary’ 16 years after the rapper was killed?” until our brains finally shut up and we gave in to the spectacle.

I also won’t try to make some clever ties between the seemingly miraculous, highly captivating entertainment in question and David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” or crack some lame jokes about “Tron” or R2D2 (if I were going to, though, it would be R’G’2, which, think about it for a minute).

No. All I’m here to say is that unless you were there you were not there, and even if you were there there’s a pretty good chance that you were not there. As someone who was there, but only sort of (I was completely star struck by the performers; it’s hard to keep a clear head in the presence of Dr. Dre, the man mostly responsible for our collective love of rap, especially after being blinded by 50 Cent’s multi-million-dollar smile), I can only say that it was an incredible experience. It was cheesy as hell, that’s undeniable; it’s been done before from Jem and the Holograms to the Gorillaz to the late Frank Sinatra; it was borderline blasphemous (again, patron saints and all that), but it was also the perfect finale to Coachella.

But you knew that already, didn’t you? Because you’ve seen the video and read the Tweets and blog posts and heard from your friends who were there.

One day, after the initial stadium tour has ended, and the inevitable Las Vegas dinner show has become a punch line someone might casually bring the hologram’s first appearance up in conversation, and ask me where I was when I first heard about it: “I was there,” I’ll tell them.

Because I was there.