ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to interrogate some of the theoretical problems that Shakur's holographic image raises, for example, how the use of his digitised body at Coachella may have reappropriated the meaning of his life and work. It argues that inserting an iconic and politically-charged singer, whose work in the 1990s redefined rap as a site of counterhegemonic speech, into a benign entertainment context, permanently and inevitably changes the symbolic weight of his oeuvre. In William Gibson's novel Spook Country an artist places holograms of dead celebrities in the spots where they died, giving rise to a ghoulish form of tourism. While posthumous Cobain videos present him as still alive, Shakur's videos present him as a composite of his media representations, thus reconciling mass mediation and mourning in ways that seem to be specific to the hip-hop community.