Fake Tupac is selling lots of real records
Tupac.0 continues to yield dividends beyond inspiring more virtual tours, engendering a general exhaustion with hologram jokes, and a creeping unease. In fact, Dr. Dre's pioneering foray into the next generation of exploiting dead people is also turning more literal profits: Sales of Tupac's Greatest Hits collection saw a 571-percent increase since his Coachella resurrection, putting it back in the Billboard 200 for the first time since 2000 at No. 129. Meanwhile, sales of the songs he "performed" also rose dramatically, with his opener "Hail Mary" and Snoop Dogg duet "2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted" seeing 1,530-percent and 881-percent jumps, respectively. And finally, even "California Love"—a song that Tupac has not performed recently, even as a hologram—shifted 11,000 downloads for a 119-percent increase, all of which will give Snoop (who co-wrote "Amerikaz") and Dre (who co-wrote "California" and co-produced some of Greatest Hits) a nice, tidy bump in royalties. In short, the old business models that involved not bringing dead people back as holograms are now dead, at least until they're brought back as etc. etc.