Alleged photo of Tupac with former ‘Blue’s Clues’ host isn’t what it seems

For years, a photo of a very unexpected pairing of people has circulated the internet: the rapper Tupac Shakur and Steve Burns, best known for hosting the children’s television series “Blue’s Clues.”

Snopes readers have written in and searched the site looking to find out whether the photo is real. Regrettably, it is not. 

There were several indications that helped narrow our search. 

First, because we found examples of the photo posted online before 2023, we knew it could not have been generated by artificial intelligence programs. The photo was either real or edited by hand.

Next, we noticed that the timeline didn’t quite add up. Shakur died Sept. 13, 1996, after being wounded in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. According to IMDB, the first episode of “Blue’s Clues” aired on Nick Jr. just five days earlier, on Sept. 8. 

While this fact doesn’t rule out the possibility that Burns and Shakur interacted, it would have been surprising for Shakur to know the up-and-coming kids’ TV star, who had appeared in exactly one episode of “Law & Order” prior to starring on “Blue’s Clues,” according to IMDB. It would also have been surprising for Burns to wear his signature striped green shirt outside of the studio.

But all of that evidence was circumstantial. In order to actually get to the bottom of things, we sought out the source of the image. We used both regular and reverse image searches on Google, and eventually uncovered two examples of the photo without Burns on the stock photo website Alamy.

The photo was credited to photographer John Barrett, and the caption said he snapped the photo at the premiere of the 1994 Darnell Martin film “I Like It Like That” in Los Angeles. Other images of Shakur attending that premiere showed he was wearing the same outfit as in the alleged photo with Burns. 

This was conclusive evidence that the photo was digitally altered to add Burns, but for the sake of being thorough, we also examined the image closely for signs of editing.

There are two clues the image was altered. Burns has a strong shadow on his right side, even though Tupac doesn’t have much of a shadow at all — the lighting isn’t realistic. Second, looking very carefully at the point where Burns’ shirt meets Shakur’s elbow reveals a join line, signifying the image was altered to add Burns. 

(Reddit user ClydeinLimbo, annotated by Snopes.)

Posts from a social media account named Vemix suggested that the image was actually created using paper — by making careful cuts in the image of Shakur to allow Burns to sit naturally in the frame. 

Snopes could not confirm that this method was how the image was created, however, and even if the image was created in this way, it appeared the creator may have digitally cleaned up the composite afterwards.

Sources