Hot 100 First-Timers: Paul Russell’s ‘Lil Boo Thang’ Gets Bigger With Debut

Four weeks ago, Paul Russell arrived on Billboard‘s charts for the first time, and now he achieves another distinction as he scores his first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 (dated Sept. 30).

Russell’s breakthrough viral hit “Lil Boo Thang,” released Aug. 18 via Arista Records, debuts at No. 99 with 9.6 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 46%), 4 million U.S. streams (up 11%) and 4,000 downloads sold in the Sept. 15-21 tracking week, according to Luminate.

The feel-good song also rises 30-27 on Pop Airplay, 32-28 on Adult Pop Airplay and 33-28 on Rhythmic Airplay.

Likely sparking further gains, the track’s official music video premiered Friday (Sept. 22).

“Lil Boo Thang” interpolates the Emotions’ classic hit “Best of My Love,” which was written by Maurice White and Al McKay of Earth, Wind & Fire. The song spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 1977 and finished as Billboard’s No. 3 year-end Hot 100 song that year. White and McKay are both credited as writers on Russell’s song.

Russell, from Texas and now based in Los Angeles, first teased a snippet of “Lil Boo Thang” in a June 28 TikTok that has since garnered more than 10 million views and launched over 190,000 creations from fans who’ve paired it with other clips. He later repurposed the post on Instagram Reels, where it has generated another 10 million views and launched over a million creations. That virality helped Russell land a deal with Arista. (Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard‘s charts except for the newly launched TikTok & Billboard Top 50.)

“First and foremost, ‘Lil Boo Thang’ is meant to be a good time,” Russell told Billboard ahead of the full track’s 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.”

Outside of “Lil Boo Thang,” Russell has released two LPs: Via Text with Ruslan in 2018, and Once in a Dry Season in 2019.