I found it: the most romantic song on TikTok. And, yes, that’s on top of “Bella’s Lullaby†which is trending after all these years. Playful lyrics over somber piano, teen rapper StaySolidRocky’s “Party Girl†is an ode to the Cardi Bs, Thee Stallions, and all the other girls who just wanna have fun. Maybe that’s why it’s gone viral straight out of the depths of the internet. “I didn’t do anything but post it on Instagram,†the Virginia rapper, real name Darak Figueroa, told Genius. “Everybody just started making different Lomotifs, Flipagrams, Dubsmash, Tiktoks. I didn’t even know what the fuck a TikTok was.†After posting snippets of the song to his Instagram last July and then releasing the full version in September, “Party Girl†racked up over 2 million views on YouTube within a few months. Then, while everyone was bored in the house this spring, TikTok found it.
A few different dances went around the app, censored to varying degrees depending on whose moms follow them. On April 25, Ansley Sparkman and Brooklyn Moss dropped the choreography that would go on to be the most popular. Meanwhile, mash-ups and dances to other verses, like Zach Vance’s remix with “After Party†by Don Toliver, continued to rack up numbers. A few weeks later, Charli Thee D’Amelio covered them both. Enough said. More than 8 million TikToks have been made with “Party Girl,†boosting its views to over 38 million on YouTube and moving it onto the Billboard Hot 100. It reached No. 21 on June 15, its seventh week on the charts, with no remixes, no star-studded music video.
With lyrics like “They say you ain’t wifey type but I don’t care, I want you / She like to do drugs too / She in love with guns too / They say you too piped up but I think that I love you,†Rocky reaffirms his love for his party girl, inspired by someone he was dating at the time. “Literally in the song I didn’t say not one good thing about that girl, but I still want her, though,†he laughed to Genius. His emotional intuition carries into his moody “Party Girl†follow-up, “Vacant Heart,†which dropped June 19 under his new label Columbia Records. (He signed on after connecting with the late emo rapper XXXTentacion’s former manager, Solomon Sobande.) Things are looking good for the 19-year-old from Virginia. Soon, party girls everywhere will be playing his music on the way to scam somebody’s man and, frankly, that’s their right.