Tupac Shakur

The city's neon lights vibrated in the polished hood of the black BMW as it cruised up Las Vegas Boulevard. The man in the passenger seat was instantly recognizable. Fans lined the streets, waving, snapping photos, begging Tupac Shakur for his autograph. Cops were everywhere, smiling. The BMW 750 sedan, with rap magnate Marion "Suge" Knight at the wheel, was leading a procession of luxury vehicles past the MGM Grand Hotel and Caesars Palace, on their way to a hot new nightclub.

At this year's Coachella festival, Tupac Shakur was brought back to life via image-projection technology. But now a force even stronger than death threatens his recent resurrection -- bankruptcy. Digital Domain Media Group, the company behind the Tupac technology, said today in a press release that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors. The 20-year-old company, which went public only in November, earned international attention for its Tupac project, and had long enjoyed clout in Hollywood for its work on big-budget features such as  "Titanic" and "Transformers.

Re "Rapper Tupac Shakur, 25, Dies 6 Days After Ambush," Sept 14: It took seven people to write this short article about a rapper's violent and horrible death. "Brilliant but tortured"? What adjectives can now be used to describe Mozart or Beethoven or any other great musician/composer of the past? Will this rapper's melodies linger in our collective memories for 300 years, be listened to with delight by music lovers worldwide? I would be surprised if that happens. "Notorious and controversial, celebrating violence and drugs" would be a better description.

Digital Domain's virtual version of Tupac Shakur has won a top honor at the world's largest advertising festival. The Venice-based visual effects studio announced Monday that the company had received a Titanium Award at the 59th annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for its virtual performance of the late rap star Tupac Shakur. The award, presented Saturday in Cannes, France, recognizes the most groundbreaking work in the creative communications field. "Virtual 2Pac" was chosen by a jury of experts from the world's top advertising agencies as one of the year's most innovative ideas, from an initial field of more than 500 entrants, Digital Domain said in a statement.

A new biographical stage production about the late rapper Tupac Shakur is expected to premiere in January at the Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago. The show, written by Lyle Miller, is titled "Amaru (The History of Tupac Amaru Shakur). " A spokeswoman for the theater company said the show is still in the works and that casting hasn't been announced. She said the production will most likely be a play with sequences featuring Shakur's music. Miller is a member of the Black Ensemble Theater who has appeared in a number of its productions.

2PAC, "Me Against the World" ( Interscope ) *** 1/2 After assorted legal scrapes, tough-guy rapper Tupac Shakur is now serving up to 4 1/2 years in a New York prison on a sex abuse conviction. In an interview in the current issue of Vibe magazine, he declares himself a changed man--no longer his old gun-toting, weed-smoking persona. On his third--and by far his best--solo album, Shakur, who records under the name 2Pac, already displays moments of changed attitude.

Digital Domain's virtual version of Tupac Shakur has won a top honor at the world's largest advertising festival. The Venice-based visual effects studio announced Monday that the company had received a Titanium Award at the 59th annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for its virtual performance of the late rap star Tupac Shakur. The award, presented Saturday in Cannes, France, recognizes the most groundbreaking work in the creative communications field. "Virtual 2Pac" was chosen by a jury of experts from the world's top advertising agencies as one of the year's most innovative ideas, from an initial field of more than 500 entrants, Digital Domain said in a statement.

Tupac Shakur, the rap star known for the violence in his lyrics and his life, was in critical condition Sunday after being gunned down in a car-to-car attack just off the jammed Las Vegas Strip. Police said Shakur, 25, was cruising in a five-car convoy with Marion "Suge" Knight, head of Los Angeles-based Death Row Records, when a white Cadillac pulled up next to Knight's black BMW 750 and a man inside opened fire about 11:15 p.m. Saturday. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sgt.

Orlando Anderson--once named by police as a suspect in the Las Vegas slaying of rap star Tupac Shakur--was killed Friday in a gang shootout in Compton that also claimed the life of another man, sources close to the case said. Police withheld formal identification of the victims, saying that the next of kin had yet to be notified.

Rap musician Tupac Shakur, in New York to stand trial on sexual molestation charges, was shot during a robbery in Manhattan early Wednesday, police said. Shakur, 22, was shot in the head and groin as he and two friends were about to enter Quad Recording Studio in Midtown Manhattan about 12:30 a.m. EST, New York Police Sgt. James Coleman said. The musician was listed in guarded condition at Bellevue Hospital.

Rock 'n' roll was never just about music. It was also about the way Jimi Hendrix held a guitar and the look in his eyes when he set it ablaze onstage in 1967. Its essence could be found in the swirl of a mosh pit, in the epic pompadour of James Brown, in the provocative finery of Madonna and KISS. For this, fans have depended on the permanent record captured by generations of rock photography, from the gorgeous black-and-white reportage by Alfred Wertheimer of a young Elvis Presley on the road in 1956 to the vivid portraits of Kurt Cobain and Katy Perry by Mark Seliger for the cover of Rolling Stone.

This post has been corrected. Please see note at bottom for details. Just a few months after wowing Coachella Valley Music Festival audiences with a virtual Tupac Shakur, visual effects company Digital Domain Media Group has announced plans to bring Elvis Presley back to life virtually. Actually, make that Elvis Presleys -- plural. "We are looking to develop several versions of Elvis," said Ed Ulbrich, chief creative officer at Digital Domain, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

A new biographical stage production about the late rapper Tupac Shakur is expected to premiere in January at the Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago. The show, written by Lyle Miller, is titled "Amaru (The History of Tupac Amaru Shakur). " A spokeswoman for the theater company said the show is still in the works and that casting hasn't been announced. She said the production will most likely be a play with sequences featuring Shakur's music. Miller is a member of the Black Ensemble Theater who has appeared in a number of its productions.

In 1985, Los Angeles rapper Toddy Tee released what could be considered West Coast hip-hop's opening salvo against police brutality in black neighborhoods. The electro-grooved "Batterram," named for the battering ram that then-LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates used to smash into homes of suspected drug dealers, was a hit on local radio station KDAY-AM. The track went on to become a protest anthem in minority neighborhoods around the city where the device was often deployed against homes that were later proved drug-free: "You're mistakin' my pad for a rockhouse / Well, I know to you we all look the same / But I'm not the one slingin' caine / I work nine to five and ain't a damn thing changed …" rapped Toddy Tee. The L.A. riots of 1992 arrived with its soundtrack in place.

The late Tupac Shakur rose again last weekend at Coachella -- brought to life by James Cameron's visual production house Digital Domain, and two hologram-imaging companies, AV Concepts and the U.K.-based Musion Systems. The capacity crowd reportedly went silent with shock when Shakur appeared to rise from the stage, shout a profanity filled version of "What's up Coachella?" and then joined headliners Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre for two songs. But that shock value will only last so long as holographic images are poised to increasingly feature in mainstream music performances.

The Grammy Museum's new exhibit "Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey," based on a large-format photography book of the same name, explores the genre's four-decade history in the United States and its effect on the world. Through interactive mixing and listening stations, video footage, rare photographs and original artifacts, visitors will get a taste of what made the first pioneering moments from such auteurs as Grandmaster Flash so appealing. Highlights include handwritten lyrics from Tupac Shakur, LL Cool J's trademark Kangol hat, the Run-DMC leather jacket and pants worn during the "Walk This Way" performance with Aerosmith and a hip-hop sneaker gallery.

Six days after his release from a New York prison, Tupac Shakur is holed up in the control booth of a dimly lit Tarzana recording studio. Bobbing his head and grinning, the 24-year-old rapper turns up the volume on a funky duet called "2 of America's Most Wanted," which he just finished with label mate Snoop Doggy Dogg (a.k.a. Calvin Broadus, whose murder trial is set to begin Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court). It's the 14th song Shakur has recorded since emerging from behind bars .

Jim Belushi was recalling his first confrontation with the late Tupac Shakur, his co-star in "Gang Related," a cop and crook comic nightmare released Wednesday by MGM that is Shakur's final film. "He was late for the first rehearsal, didn't show up for the second [and was] late for the third, so I turned to him and I go, 'Before we start, I want to get something straight,' " the actor says during an interview in his trailer on the set of the ABC series "Total Security."

Where you've seen her Janet Jackson is best known as a platinum-selling recording artist, though she began her acting career as a 9-year-old on her family's variety show "The Jacksons." She later appeared on the sitcoms "Good Times," "Diff'rent Strokes" and "Fame." Her feature film debut was in "Poetic Justice" opposite Tupac Shakur. She has since appeared in "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" and "Why Did I Get Married?" -- Amy Kaufman

Johnny Jackson, 39, a rapper, songwriter and music producer for the late hip-hop star Tupac Shakur, died Oct. 3 when he jumped from the second tier of a housing unit in the downtown Twin Towers jail, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore. Sheriff's investigators determined he committed suicide, Whitmore said. Jackson, a resident of Acton, was awaiting sentencing on a felony charge of driving under the influence after pleading no contest, according to the Los Angeles district attorney's office.