There are a lot of iconic photos of Kurt Cobain—almost any rock fan would recognise the image of him smoking a cigarette in studio, or posed alongside RuPaul and and a squalling baby Frances Bean. And for a moment over the holiday weekend, it seemed that there might have been a new instantly-famous photo of the late musician, one that costarred fellow ‘90s icon Snoop Dogg. Turns out, it was a bit too good to be true.
On the Fourth of July, Snoop posted a Throwback Thursday photo to Instagram that seemingly showed the rapper as a young man smoking a blunt alongside Cobain. "Young dogg with Kurt," he captioned the image, "[19]92."
"This shit is incredible!!" commented Busta Rhymes. Tyrese was into the picture too. "Wow we already know you’re legendary,” he wrote, "you just took it up a few levels!!"
But the picture was perhaps too legendary to be real. If an image of Snoop Dogg smoking weed with Kurt Cobain did exist, it’d be on half of all freshman dorm walls in every college in the country. Instead, the image was was a pretty obvious photoshop. It originated from the Instagram account _vemix_, which specialises in creating doctored scenes of celebrities hanging out. Some pairings (a very young Snoop standing near Eazy-E) are slightly more plausible than others (Jack White and Jimi Hendrix chilling in arm chairs)—but all are fake. In posting the image, Snoop was either trolling or just plain forgot that this particular scene never occurred. Considering both Snoop’s sense of humor and legendary love of weed, both options sound pretty good.
Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York.
