Fat Papi’s ‘Freaked Out’ has landed on the Billboard Hot 100 – and it’s all thanks to a TikTok-famous haircut.

A viral TikTok video about a “bob” haircut has launched Aotearoa rapper Fat Papi on a fame spiral of global jaunts, streaming spikes and a scramble to find a manager – as well as a hit song landing on the US, UK and Australian singles charts.

Baban Hussain, the Auckland-based Kurdish rapper who has been making music under the name Fat Papi since 2023, shocked local music industry followers by entering the Billboard Hot 100 charts with his recent single ‘Freaked Out’, a rare feat for a local artist and an especially rare achievement for a rapper.

‘Freaked Out’ sits at No. 89 on the Hot 100, surrounded by songs by chart mainstays Drake, Olivia Rodrigo and Future. The last Aotearoa artist to appear in the Hot 100 was Lorde in 2025 with ‘What Was That’. Before her, Jawsh 685 achieved the same feat in 2020 with ‘Laxed (Siren Beat)’.

Hussain’s success can be traced to a viral TikTok video and an apparently misheard lyric. ‘Freaked Out’, a collaboration with the Perth producer prodshushy, was released on June 4. Two days later, TikTok user Jocelyn Meiere, or “Miss Diva Bob”, posted a video that used ‘Freaked Out’ to show off her “bob” haircut. 

In it, she shakes her hair to Hussain’s lyrics that say “Get that bag”, apparently misheard as “Get that bob”. With 6.7 million views, Meiere’s video has gone viral, inspiring others to mimic her success and show off their own haircuts with ‘Freaked Out’ as the soundtrack.

While TikTok videos themselves don’t count towards a song’s placement on the Hot 100, a viral video can push fans to listen to the song on streaming platforms, which do count towards the charts.

Meiere’s video has pushed Hussain’s numbers to spike dramatically. On YouTube, the video for ‘Freaked Out’ has more than nine million views. On Spotify, it has 50 million streams. Fat Papi has seven million monthly Spotify listeners, pushing him past other local streaming success stories Benee (4.5m), Balu Brigada (5.3m) and Shouse (6.6m).

His rise has been so meteoric Hussain didn’t have time to chat for this story. The Spinoff was told he had just returned from a trip to London, where he met with Meiere and made several videos celebrating their sudden success together.

In one post, Hussain details how Meiere made her viral video. “She filmed a TikTok at 1am to a random cool sound she liked … and now I have one of the biggest songs in the world,” he writes. In another, Hussain says he is the “first ever Kurdish artist to get a Billboard hit and second rapper from New Zealand.” (Savage reached number 45 with ‘Swing’ in 2008.)

The Spinoff was told Hussain spent his weekend packing his bags to travel to Australia, then the US. His new manager said the ink was barely dry on their contract. When we requested a publicity photo, we were asked if we could wait as a photo shoot was scheduled for this week.

Instead of an interview, we were sent this short statement: “Thank you to everyone who’s been rocking with ‘Freaked Out’. We got more bangers coming shortly!”

Viral success is nothing new in the age of social media, but it is rare for local acts to gain the kind of quickfire traction Hussain has chanced upon. Local music journalist and chart nerd Gareth Shute was shocked by how fast it’s happened for him. “The singular thing about this case is the speed,” he told me. “In less than two months he’s blown up. That is pretty crazy.”

The trick now is for Hussain to turn his viral success into a long-lasting career. ”It seems like he has good intuition about to to turn this buzz into something real,” Shute says.

Radio support and placement on the soundtracks for popular TV shows or movies could get Fat Papi in front of even more people, Shute suggests. “It’s a crazy world and once your song is on enough playlists, the numbers tick on and on,” he says. 

For now, Fat Papi appears to be soaking up the success of viral fame. He’s just been named on the line-up for Australia’s four-date Spilt Milk festival in December alongside Lewis Capaldi, Baby Keem and Raye, and ‘Freaked Out’ sits at No. 49 on the Australian singles charts and No. 48 on the UK charts. 

The only question is, will Hussain get a bob haircut himself? If his TikTok momentum continues, he might just have to.