#FreakedOut is the hashtag for the June 2026 Fat Papi and Prodshushy single that became one of TikTok’s dominant summer sounds and, in early August, put 22-year-old Kurdish-New Zealand rapper Baban “Fat Papi” Hussain on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 88 — the first Kurdish artist ever to chart on the US Hot 100. The track anchored a viral “reasons to get a bob” haircut trend on TikTok, sparked a Warner Chappell publishing deal for both Fat Papi and his Australian producer Owen Omen (prodshushy) in the same month, and crossed 64 million Spotify streams by mid-August, according to reporting from Pop Base, Billboard, The Spinoff and GQ Middle East.
Quick Facts
- Song: “FREAKED OUT”
- Artists: Fat Papi (Baban Hussain, Auckland) with Prodshushy (Owen Omen, Australia)
- Released: June 2026
- Genre: hip-hop / R&B
- Billboard Hot 100 debut: No. 88, early August 2026 (per Pop Base / Billboard)
- Historic mark: first Kurdish artist to chart on the US Billboard Hot 100
- Spotify streams by August: over 64 million
- Label: Synth Club Records / First Generation
- Publisher deal: Warner Chappell Music signed both Fat Papi and Omen in August 2026
Origin
Fat Papi and Prodshushy released “FREAKED OUT” in June 2026, and it initially underperformed. In interviews with The Spinoff and GQ Middle East, Fat Papi says he thought the song “wasn’t getting much traction at all.” That changed roughly a week before it broke through, when Prodshushy posted a TikTok dance mash-up edit of the track that quickly cleared one million views. The bigger inflection point was TikToker Jocelyn Meiere’s video listing reasons to cut her hair into a bob, hard-cutting on each line of “FREAKED OUT” to add a new reason — a format that turned the song’s chorus into an instantly recognizable video template.
How the Trend Works
The dominant “FREAKED OUT” trend format is a bob-cut reveal:
- A first-person setup (“reasons I got a bob”, “why I finally cut my hair”)
- Text overlays paced to the drop of the chorus, each line snapping to one beat
- A reveal shot of the new haircut, often with a lip-sync to the hook
- Frequent variants substitute other transformations (color changes, wardrobe overhauls, apartment redecorations, breakup arcs) into the same rhythm
The format is simple enough to imitate on a phone and specific enough that a viewer identifies the trend from the first bar of the beat — the two properties that most reliably turn a song into a TikTok sound.
Chart Impact
Pop Base reported the Billboard Hot 100 debut at No. 88 in early August, calling it Fat Papi’s first Hot 100 entry and highlighting the historic Kurdish-artist first. The song also charted in Australia and New Zealand, and, as of MuchMusic’s August coverage, had cleared 64 million Spotify streams. In the same month, Billboard broke the news that Warner Chappell had signed both Fat Papi and Omen to a publishing deal.
Cultural Impact
“FREAKED OUT” landed in the small category of TikTok breakout tracks that transferred to real charts, real deals and real biography rather than fading with the trend. Coverage in The Spinoff, GQ Middle East and Kurdish Weekly foregrounded Fat Papi’s family history — parents who fled Iraq for New Zealand in 1999 — and the historic first for Kurdish artists on the Hot 100. The bob-haircut trend also became a case study in how quickly a song can be sold by a single high-view creator, in this case Jocelyn Meiere (“Miss Diva Bob”), whose format most other participants inherited.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Papi
- https://thespinoff.co.nz/pop-culture/04-08-2026/how-a-viral-haircut-catapulted-a-nz-rapper-onto-the-us-charts
- https://www.gqmiddleeast.com/article/rapper-fat-papi-is-kiwi-kurdish-and-freaked-out
- https://www.billboard.com/pro/warner-chappell-signs-freaked-out-fat-papi-prodshushy/
- https://kurdishweekly.com/fat-papi-freaked-out/
- https://x.com/PopBase/status/2085148362903556564
- https://x.com/Much/status/2086948051155890209