The VMAs were held today and there’s one very good (bad) reason why they’re getting some attention on Gizmodo Australia: Eminem and Snoop Dogg performed in the metaverse. Yes, a mini concert inside the internet. They also smoked a prop joint. Isn’t 2022 rad?
The MTV Video Music Awards happen every year and every year we get something fun* making headlines. This year, Snoop Dogg and Eminem puffed on some fake dope and then the duo fell down a spiral and landed in the metaverse. It’s really writing itself at this stage.
.@Eminem and @SnoopDogg got so high they ended up in the metaverse during their #VMAs performance https://t.co/j1ZBtKxuwq
— MTV NEWS (@MTVNEWS) August 29, 2022
Animated versions of each rapper performed in front of technicolour backgrounds, as MTV puts it, these internet backdrops included scenes of Long Beach, California, and Detroit, Michigan, Snoop and Eminem’s respective cities of origin.
The sum of it is that the pair performed ‘From the D 2 the LBC’ as animated versions of themselves. It’s like a music video, just….yeah, it’s an animated music video, like The Gorillaz’s ‘Feel Good Inc.’ from 2005, just broadcast live. And more gimmicky.
As you can see from the clip, the rappers were frequently converted to Bored Ape Yacht Club characters (the NFT die-hards are going to tear me apart for that explanation) in what can only be described as unnecessary.
What does look good is how MTV managed to transition the rappers from within the internet to IRL, as the production made this appear seamless. The audience was going nuts, but the both of them are great musicians and performers regardless of their ape .JPG friends. While we’ve struggled to enter metaverse concerts (through no fault of our own), this performance had no ‘hosting’ element that the attendees needed to access in order to ‘experience’ the concert. Could also be that it wasn’t held in unreliableland, I mean, Decentraland.
It seemed to work okay as a gimmick blending the real world with this online space that we refer to as Web3. The graphics were fine, much better than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Horizon Worlds, but we’d definitely reject the characterisation that Snoop and Eminem’s animated performance featuring moving .JPGs was ‘mind-blowing’.
Ariana Grande did this last year with a concert within Fortnite and Korn held a concert in Adventure Quest 3D back in 2019.
But, folks, Web3 is the future.