Following the breakout success of Lil Nas X and Blanco Brown, Tik Tok users are currently creating a viral smash for Bay Area rapper Stunna Girl.
Tik Tok is unstoppable. Not only has the video-sharing app generated more than one-billion downloads worldwide, but it has (so far) created two new stars in the world of music. The first was Lil Nas X, whose success on the platform with “Old Town Road” lead to the longest-running number-one song in Billboard chart history. The second, Blanco Brown and his song “The Git Up,” took a talented songwriter from obscurity to RIAA certified Gold status in less than three months.
Now, Tik Tok is about to have its third star-making moment of 2019. The lucky artist connected to this moment is Stunna Girl, a Bay Area rapper with a moderate string of YouTube hits, but nothing that compares to the moment she’s about to have in the months ahead.
Recently, Stunna Girl uploaded her song “Runway” to Tik Tok. Users quickly discovered the song, and shortly thereafter a new trend emerged on the platform. Dubbed the #RunwayChallenge, Tik Tok videos using Stunna Girl’s song look more or less like this:
Currently, there are more than two-million Tik Tok videos that use “Runway.” Over 1.3 million of those videos were created after August 1. During this same period, “Runway” hit the top 5 on Spotify’s Global Viral 50 song chart, amassing more than 1.6 million plays overall as of August 12. The track also has more than 500,000 plays on Soundcloud and millions of streams on YouTube from numerous fan uploads.
That last point is important because fans and fans alone are the ones responsible for Stunna Girl’s breakout success.
“Runway” was initially released in February 2019 as part of Stunna Girl’s album, YKWTFGO. The song was not released as an official single, and it does not have an official video. Stunna Girl herself does not have a YouTube channel or a Twitter account (she does exist on Instagram). No major outlet has covered or highlighted the song outside of sharing Tik Toks on their social channels.
In short, no one would care about “Runway” if it did not connect with consumers.
Much like the success of Lil Nas X and Blanco Brown, Stunna Girl’s sudden rise through the internet ranks can be entirely attributed to music fans. It’s the users of Tik Tok that made “Runway” a hit, and it’s their enjoyment of the song’s opening lines that are quickly making Stunna Girl a name on tip of everyone’s tongue.
The virality of “Runway” cannot be manufactured. No amount of label money can force listeners to create original content based on a song from a largely unknown artist, let alone listen to the track in the first place. Stunna Girl has tapped into hip-hop culture by going straight to the source of its energy, the audience, and giving them something so catchy and fun that they cannot help making it their own.
Tik Tok has nothing left to prove. If Tik Tok users like a song there is no doubt the artist behind the track can have a career. Not everyone that goes viral on the platform will become the next Lil Nas X, but they will develop an audience that seeks out their music outside of the platform.
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