Lil Timmy Tim / Timothée Chalamet High School Dance

About

Lil' Timmy Tim is the name of an alter ego for the Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet, who was a teen rapper during his student years at New York's LaGuardia High School. Years after the actor's success, a 2013 video of Timothée Chalamet's High School Dance performance showing him dancing and rapping went viral on social media, inspiring parody videos, remixes, memes and many other formats.

Origin

LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, located in New York City, organizes an annual talent show for the students to showcase any type of artistic performance. American actor Timothée Chalamet, who graduated from LaGuardia in 2013, regularly participated in the school's talent show, often performing via an alter ego rapper known as Lil' Timmy Tim. One of the earliest videos uploaded showing the actor's performance (shown below) was posted by YouTuber^[1] zootzootzoot, which garnered over 167,000 views and 5,800 likes in a decade.

On June 13th, 2013, Timothée Chalamet wrote^[2] the song "Statistics (Ms. Lawton)" as his rap persona Lil Timmy Tim for his 2013 Statistics class at LaGuardia High School. His overall grade was a D+. The music video (shown below) resurfaced on December 9th, 2017, after it was posted on YouTube^[3] by user timotheechalametfan1096, which amassed more than 11 million views and 477,000 likes in six years.

Spread

The virality of the song "Statistics (Ms. Lawton)" inspired YouTuber^[4] johndo5096 to upload a video from the 2013 LaGuardia talent show in which Timothée Chalamet performs Nick Minaj's song "Roman's Revenge." The video (shown below) garnered over 4.9 million views and 202,000 likes in six years.

The performance also resurfaced on TikTok in the early 2020s as users started to post parody videos and overlayed texts commenting on the actor's dance and rap skills. For instance, on June 10th, 2023, TikTok^[5] user @t_chlmts posted a clip of Chalamet's dance (shown below, left) with the overlay text saying, "I feel bad for the people who had to perform after him," which amassed over 3 million plays and 937,000 likes in four months.

On May 18th, TikTok^[6] user @rissipoohhhh posted the actor's dance performance as an exploitable reaction video paired with the overlay text "Me when that notification I been waiting for comes across my screen." The post (shown below, right) garnered roughly 1.4 million plays and 168,000 likes in five months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References