"Snapbacks Back" is a song by American rapper Tyga featuring Chris Brown. It was released on June 28, 2011, and uses the instrumental from Meek Mill and Rick Ross's "Tupac Back". The song is a tongue-in-cheek take on Meek Mill's tribute to Tupac Shakur, about the return of snapback caps. Tyga later put it on his mixtape Well Done 2. Soon after it came out, the father of a 12-year-old rapper accused Tyga of copying the title and idea of his son's song.
Background
Tyga and Chris Brown had worked together before, most recently on Brown's "Deuces". When "Snapbacks Back" came out, Well Done 2 was still to come, and Tyga's album Careless World was due later in the year.
Composition
Tyga and Brown rap about snapback caps over the "Tupac Back" instrumental. HotNewHipHop described the Mike WiLL Made It beat as titanic and said the pair make their boasts about fashion and girls sound like matters of life and death, while gently poking fun at the original.
Tyga claims credit for bringing snapbacks back. Complex and Vibe both pointed out that nobody knows who actually revived the style. One of his lines calls him the "Master Splinter of rap", a reference to Master Splinter.
Reception
The Boombox called Tyga's verse adequate but uninspired and Brown's bars decent, though it doubted the song would win Brown new fans. Complex said Brown sounded a bit angry on the second verse and wondered who he was aiming at.
In January 2012, Vibe included the song in a list of Tyga's ten best. It called it the hardest-hitting of the many remixes of "Tupac Back", with Tyga boasting about his snapback game and Brown rapping aggressively. In 2022, HotNewHipHop named it one of the five most memorable Tyga and Brown collaborations. It called the song fun even if a little ridiculous, and said it probably did no harm to sales of caps from Tyga's Last Kings line.
Plagiarism accusation
On July 6, 2011, The Boombox and PopCrush reported that Durvel Wilson Jr. had accused Tyga and Brown of taking the title and concept from a song by his 12-year-old son, who raps as Young Vishis. The son's version came out weeks earlier. Young Vishis's song also used the "Tupac Back" instrumental.
According to the reports, Wilson posted a link to the song on the Facebook page of Young Money president Mack Maine on June 10. The post was deleted around the time Tyga's version came out, about two and a half weeks later. PopCrush noted that Tyga's version used the same hook as Young Vishis's but had different lyrics in its verses and for most of the chorus, and added a verse from Brown. Wilson told HipHopWired that deleting the post did not erase it from his own page and that he would keep pushing the issue. Neither report included a response from Tyga.
