Silento is a young rapper from Conyers, Georgia. He was born Ricky Lamar Hawk on January 22, 1998 and rose to fame in early 2015 after he released his debut single "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)", a song about a dance craze in the grand tradition of the Tootsie Roll, the Dougie and the Harlem Shake.

Recorded in December 2014, the song was made available on his YouTube channel in late January 2015. Over the course of one week, the track which he created with Bolo Da Producer racked up over two-and-a-half million U.S. streams. Following the success, Silento was signed to Captiol Records in April and later re-released the track along with its accompanying music video.

The "Watch Me" video arrived on YouTube on June 26. It was shot in Atlanta, Georgia and features Silento dancing with dance crews, high school and university cheerleaders, fans and even a trio of conservative women. The visuals has so far garnered 100,000,000 views.

The song continued to become a hit. It has peaked at No. 3 on Billboard Hot 100. "The Whip and the Nae Nae were two different dances," Silento explained of the inspiration behind his song. "I just got tired of seeing people do them, so I started doing my own rendition where I was doing them both."

"I recorded 'Watch Me' one day after school," he added. "I had been asking Bolo to produce the song for me for about three months, and he didn't think it was going to be anything, but when we did the song and dropped it on SoundCloud, it took off."

The success of "Watch Me", according to Silento, didn't affect his life too much. He's still a 17-year-old senior at Redan High School in Stone Mountain, Georgia. In his TuneCore biography, he said, "I'm still the same - I'm still me, you know? I guess now some people, they look at me like, 'You're famous.' But you know, it hasn't really changed me at all."