Jim Burnett owns the amphitheater formerly known as the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts, and tells us he's installing a new 'Pac monument to replace the old one the rapper's family took when they sold the Center in 2015.

Burnett's hired artist Nijel Binns -- who's done statues of Michael Jackson and Shirley Temple -- to lead the project. Binns says he's creating a 7-foot bronze statue based on a 13-inch clay model, which Burnett estimates will cost more than half a million bucks to complete.

They're planning to unveil the new statue in September, around the 21st anniversary of Tupac's death. We'll say this ... the new one's way more gangsta than the OG.