"Lil Boo Thang" by Paul Russel

About

"Lil Boo Thang" is a funk-pop song by artist Paul Russell. Since releasing a snippet of the unreleased track on TikTok in late June 2023, the sound went viral on the platform, with several commenters clamoring for it to be released in an official capacity and using it in a wide array of videos in the following weeks.

Origin

On June 28th, 2023, musician Paul Russell uploaded a clip of an unreleased song called "Lil Boo Thang" to TikTok. The clip gained over 548,000 likes and 3.4 million views in three weeks (shown below). The song features a sample of "Best of My Love" by The Emotions.^[2]

Spread

Over the following several weeks, the song went viral on the app, seeing use in over 14,000 videos as of July 19th, 2023. While some videos included dancing, the song was used to soundtrack a wide variety of content.

For example, on July 16th, 2023, the TikTok account klk.interiors posted a video about interior decorating set to the song, gaining over 540,000 likes in three days (shown below, left). On July 11th, user @bunnydayoff posted a video of a rabbit dancing to the song, gaining over 141,000 likes in one week (shown below, right).

The snippet also generated significant excitement for a full release. On Russell's original video, the fast-food chain Sonic commented that it wanted to assist Russell in helping the song go viral.^[1] Russell also posted follow-up videos responding to people clamoring for a full release.

On July 3rd, 2023, he responded to a commenter asking for the song to be released with a video that gained over 1.3 million views in two weeks (shown below, left). On July 10th, he then posted a humorous skit about how the mass of fans demanding a full release of the track made him "fear for his life," gaining over 40,000 likes in one week (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References