Thursday, March 28, 2024

Notorious B.I.G. Hologram Set for Faith Evans Video, Possible Tour

notorious-b.i.g

*A Notorious B.I.G. hologram is one giant step closer to becoming a reality.

Faith Evans has been teasing the prospect of a Biggie hologram for months – and now contracts have been signed to bring back her late ex-husband, born Christopher Wallace, with the use of digital technology.

According to Billboard, ARHT Media has landed the digital rights to Biggie’s hologram. The Los Angeles-based company has partnered with ByStorm Entertainment, who handles the late rapper’s estate alongside Evans and Biggie’s mother Voletta Wallace. ARHT will create what they’re calling a “Humagram” of Biggie to perform in various capacities, including on stage and in music videos.

“This project has been a long-time coming, and it is very special to me,” says Ms. Wallace. “Words can’t even capture how elated I am for the world to finally see my son again on stage and beyond. Christopher’s impact and legacy will not only live through his past work, but also the new experiences which have been made possible through ARHT Media.”

The first project for Biggie’s Humagram will be a music video for the first single off Faith Evans’ duets compilation titled “The King & I.” As previously reported, Faith revealed on Dame Dash’s radio show in March that a potential hologram tour was in the works, which has now been confirmed by ARHT Media founder Rene Barti.

“What we’re gonna start with is a video with the first single from ‘The King & I’ then I think Faith wants to do a little tour,” says Barti. While he did not offer specific tour details, B.I.G.’s Bad Boy family, led by Puff Daddy, are set to perform a sold-out “One Night Only” show in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on May 20, Biggie’s birthday. (On Monday, April 11, Diddy also announced a second Bad Boy show in Brooklyn with the hashtag #BADBOYFamilyReunionTour, teasing a possible trek.)

“After seeing all the technologies out there, I realized right away that ARHT Media would be the best partner to bring back Notorious B.I.G.,” Faith says. “I look forward to continue working with them and presenting the world with his Humagram in both video and stage format, through the release of my album The King & I.”

More details from Billboard:

Over the course of nine months, ARHT Media founder Rene Bharti was introduced to Wayne Barrow (ByStorm Entertainment president) as well as his partner, president of urban music for RCA and CEO of ByStorm Entertainment, Mark Pitts. “They’ve seen all the competitors. Wayne Barrow has been looking all over the world for the right company to do this hologram,” explains Bharti to Billboard. “When it comes to [working with] someone who used to be your friend and working with their mother, you want to do it right. As soon as he came into our L.A. studio, after a couple of months of going back and forth, he said right away, I’m gonna go with you guys.”

What sold Biggie’s family and estate was ARHT Media’s — “ARHT” stands for Augmented Reality Holographic Technology — innovative patented technology that begins with “the creation of a digital human, being it living, deceased in this case or even fictional,” says CEO Paul Duffy. “We have a very sophisticated transmission technology for beaming these digital humans through the public Internet to literally any point on the planet. These digital humans can scale to any size of venue so it can be in a window display, your living room or it could be in a 50,000-seat arena for a real-time delivery and display of this human hologram, that we call “Humagrams.””

The game-changing technology is also easy to throw “in the back of a uHaul truck, and set up and break down within an hour,” Bharti adds, noting the edge over the competitors like Hologram USA, which helmed the late rhymer Tupac Shakur’s holographic performance at 2012’s Coachella Festival.

When it comes to pinning down Biggie’s mannerisms in holographic form, Duffy and Bharti don’t foresee any challenges as they continue to work on the design alongside his family and estate. “We’ll use input from virtually anywhere so we’ll talk to people, we’ll obviously look through existing footage,” details Duffy. “We’ll meet with family members and just look to alternately capture the essence of Biggie. Then we’ll have their eyes on all the content and material that’s being built. Of course, nothing would be released until they felt comfortable and signed off on it.”

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