Ok, so it may have been a hologram of Tupac, but that didn’t matter at all. If you grew up on All Eyez on Me then you undoubtedly watched this performance with a smile that couldn’t be wiped off your face. Seeing Tupac on stage at Coachella was something that no one will soon forget. And it wasn’t just Tupac joining Dr. Dre and Snoop, they brought even more friends to the party.
The two came out and performed the classics right out of the gate. Although, with Snoop being 40 and Dre at 47, most everything they have in their catalog is a classic by this point. The Next Episode, Kush, Deep Cover/187 started off the show and things got real when the staple of early 90’s hip hop started, Nuthin’ But a G Thang.
During these first handful of songs, it became a real Snoop event by the size of the blunt he lit on stage. The first guests of the evening came out during a tribute to the late Nate Dogg when they performed Ain’t No Fun. During this song, Warren G and Kurupt joined the duo on stage. If everyone wasn’t moving by this point, their rendition of House of Pain’s Jump Around fixed that in a hurry. Soon after Jump Around we saw our next guest, Wiz Khalifa who come out to perform the smash hit he has with Snoop, Young Wild and Free.
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Dr. Dre then brought out Kendrick Lamar, who had a rather successful set on Friday at Coachella. The two performed Lamar’s new song, The Recipe, which features Dre.
After Lamar, during which Snoop and Wiz disappeared off stage to smoke, the guest stars really started showing up. 50 Cent, joined by Tony Yayo, came out with What Up Gangsta and flowed right into P.I.M.P. Also, I was rather surprised and pumped at the same time to hear him do the classic, and almost a decade old, In Da Club.
The highlight of the show, and perhaps the weekend, was when we were reintroduced to Tupac in hologram form. The insanely realistic performance featured Tupac starting off by asking the crowd “What the f*ck is up Coachella?”. Tupac started off with a solo performance of Hail Mary before being joined by Snoop for 2 of Americaz Most Wanted, where the pair rapped along side each other for the first time in 16 years.
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Following Tupac was Eminem who performed the most of any of the guests. He started out with I Need a Doctor and Forgot About Dre, with the latter having a dub step flavor added to the beat. He also performed Till I Collapse, as a type of tribute to Nate Dogg, similar to his Lollapalooza 2011 performance.
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Snoop and Dre ended the evening with classics just as they opened. Snoop going first with Who Am I? (What’s My Name?) and Dre going with Still D.R.E. from the smash album, Chronic 2001.
Unfortunately they did not come back out for an encore, which I thought was rather shocking. But given the amount of talent and work they did during their set, I guess I can’t blame them. I joked on Twitter that perhaps the only way to make the performance better would be for Dre to announce a release date for his much anticipated new album, Detox.
