A Legend's Hologram Performance: Are You Uncomfortable Yet, America?

By: Jamie Borromeo

I couldn’t help but read comments on my Twitter Feed and Facebook Status Updates that were criticizing the Tupac hologram performance at Coachella this past week.

 The Huffington Post started by calling it “uncomfortable”, while others viewed the performance as “reminding us of the worst of rap culture with shouting, swearing, misogyny and offensive comments. Tupac has diminished the culture today.”

Now, I can see how someone who didn’t grow up listening to Tupac can look at the surface of this performance and judge it in this light. When this hologram starts cursing at me and calling me a mother f’er with its opening, it isn’t traditionally the best way to start a performance and initially reflects poorly on the hip-hop culture.

However, beyond what seems to be the crass nature of rap music lies the opportunity for audience members to listen to the voice of America’s inner cities once again using creative technology like this hologram. A single song performed by Tupac allows us to take an anthropological journey into America’s ghettos, where over 80% of babies are born out of wedlock, where crime and incarceration rates soar way beyond the national average in communities of color, and where drug abuse, prostitution and the lack of education highlight something much more "uncomfortable” than a legendary rapper performing as a hologram.

The agony and anger in his voice, the depth of his lyrics regarding the hate he felt for the state of his life, and the glory he felt once he was finally making enough money to own the things he only dreamed of as a kid, relays a powerful message: Real people ACTUALLY live like this.  And yes, not everyone has a white picket fence and the luxury of changing the channel to something more pleasant, because this is their everyday reality. There are millions of people who are subjected to the inhumanity and lack of attention our society has given to the poor in the past 40 years, whose singlular lives create the collective voice of poverty and lack of education in America. In our recent history, the gap between the haves and have-nots has shifted disproportionately in the favor of the rich. It is a shift that has caused a movement by the 99% who feel marginalized in the national discourse.

What should be uncomfortable for anyone watching that performance is that we have numbed ourselves to the reality that too many of our citizens live a life of poverty—and some American citizens have the audacity to support politicians who want to make further cuts to educating our youth, further cuts to providing welfare for some of America’s poor, and want to continue to promote a culture of violence through guns and war.

I truly believe any discomfort of the lyrics should stem from the fact that we, as a country, have not cleaned up our urban areas. The discomfort of rap lyrics SHOULD be felt—you can feel the pain through the lyrics of Tupac—knowing that people like him lived with so much hate in their hearts, not because he like it, but because revenge, violence, drug abuse and poverty were the only glory he could feel in his lifetime.

Pac talks about revenge being sweet, praying to God that he lives another day, living fearless despite people wanting to kill him. How can you love the world when so much pain and agony infiltrates your streets? How can we expect people not to succumb to the influence of gang violence when there is not enough investment in education? When war comes before books, big oil corporate interest comes before proper housing subsidies for families, and the right to bear arms has turned into an epidemic of gun violence in our neighborhoods, how can we not feel rage?

To interpret his rap songs simply for face value does not do justice to why people like myself appreciate the art of Tupac and the legacy of his life.

He died one of the most tragic deaths, and has been immortalized by young people like myself, not because a life of poverty and violence is what I emulate, but because the strength in his voice resonates with the discomfort in my heart when life is challenging. The sorrow in his all too painful lyrics resonates with sorrow so many American's feel today. And the anger in his tone resonates with the anger that I convert into positive energy, so that we may change the world and see less people subjected to the harsh reality that many of us are lucky to never have to experience. Although I don't agree with resorting to violence that he expresses, I do believe those feelings can be transformed into compassion for those who are less fortunate and do not have a shot at education or career opportunities like many of us do. 

I  reflect deeply on how this man clearly changed so many young people’s lives through music after that performance. I also don't pretend that everyone appreciates him for the same reasons I do. My only hope is that others take the time to see, beyond the catchy beats and aggression in his voice,  that he transformed his pain into a beat, his story of poverty into a rhyme, his soul into a rap legacy. It’s a story that should be appreciated for it’s deeper meaning--a story that we should acknowledge is, unfortunately, alive and well in our inner cities at this very moment.

The hologram may just be a fictional projected image of the legendary Pac, but his lyrics and voice sing truth. It is an authentic raw memoir lyricized, and it commands the respect for the mere fact that it is a rarity hearing things that are REAL. And what is true should be heard whether audiences are comfortable with it or not.

If you're interested in hearing more from the man himself, here are various clips of Tupac's Wisdom.