He hasn't even taken the stage yet but Justin Timberlake's halftime performance is already embroiled in controversies.

The most bizarre of these was the rumor, reported Saturday on TMZ, that he'd share the stage with a hologram of the late, great Prince. Reports of a planned holographic tribute to the pop star, who passed away in April 2016, were swiftly met with vehement backlash.

Much of that criticism coalesced around Prince's long-time drummer and friend Sheila E, who tweeted a reminder that, in life, Prince expressed deep hatred for holographic revivals of dead artists.

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"That’s the most demonic thing imaginable," he told Guitar World Magazine back in 1998. "Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing… it really is demonic. And I am not a demon."

You were many things, Prince, but "demon" certainly wasn't one of them.

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Tweet may have been deleted

Timberlake has often cited Prince as a huge source of inspiration. But the line between "inspiration" and "exploitation" would surely be blurred by a hollow resurrection without consent from the original artist, not to mention one who is on record as being against holographic revivals.

Luckily, Sheila E later confirmed on Twitter that Prince would not be appearing at the Super Bowl as a hologram.

However, if all this talk of Prince has you missing the artist, you can re-watch his legendary performance at the Super Bowl XLI halftime show here.

It's unclear whether the rumors were true and Timberlake hastily scuttled the idea, or if TMZ misreported his plans for the halftime show. The closest confirmation of the alleged tribute came in the form of an unnamed NFL source who talked to The Star Tribune, claiming the hologram was still part of a Friday rehearsal of Timberlake's performance.

Regardless, the whole ordeal gave a new meaning to Prince's lyric in his 1987 song "Sign o' the Times": "Some say a man ain't happy unless a man truly dies."

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