Lil Boo Thang

If you give a hoot about feel-good songs on TikTok, there’s a solid chance you’ve heard Paul Russell’s “Lil Boo Thang” by now. A full version of the infectious song, which interpolates “Best of My Love” by The Emotions, has been cleared for landing and is set for release on streaming services at midnight on Friday (Aug. 18). Billboard has also learned that Arista Records has officially signed Russell, a Texas native now based in Los Angeles, ahead of the song drop.

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The proof of “Lil Boo Thang”’s virality is in the stats. Russell teased a 21-second snippet of the track via TikTok on June 28, with the post garnering over 5.3 million views and launching over 55,000 “creations” from new fans who’ve paired it with everything from clips of their dogs to best-friend tributes to fitness milestones. Russell later repurposed the post on Instagram Reels, where he reeled in another 10.4 million views.

In six subsequent TikTok posts that included the song, with lyrics like “Tell ‘em you found a lil’ something too fresh” and the folksy “I don’t give a hoot what your dude say,” Russell has generated another 4 million views and dozens of comments with varying versions of “Dude, drop the full version now!!!“. (He again cloned these follow-ups on Reels, bringing in millions more listens for the song clip.)

The infectiousness of “Lil Boo Thing” owes quite a bit to the legendary bounce of “Best of My Love,” a disco-funk anthem written by Maurice White and Al McKay of Earth, Wind & Fire that spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 and was The Emotions’ biggest hit.

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The full version of “Lil Boo Thang” (see the single cover, right) has received 20,000 pre-saves to date.

“First and foremost, ‘Lil Boo Thang’ is meant to be a good time,” said Russell ahead of the full track release. “When I wrote it, I was stressed out on a Thursday afternoon, so I just turned on some of the music that makes me happy and imagined that I was celebrating something. I think what makes the song special is the fact that so many of us are ready to just forget about whatever is happening around us and enjoy the good things in life — not just thinking back to good times in the past but creating new ones in the present day.”

The Cornell graduate has nearly 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, with 14 million streams for his 2022 single “Ms. Poli Sci” and 7.3 million for 2021’s “Hallelujah.”

Check out the TikTok post that started it all: