Silento, the rapper who rose to fame at simply 17 with the viral hit “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” has formally been sentenced to jail for the homicide of his cousin, Frederick Rooks. The 27-year-old artist, whose actual title is Richard Lamar “Ricky” Hawk, was arrested by Georgia’s DeKalb County Police Division on Feb. 1, 2021, simply 11 days after Rooks was discovered fatally shot in a residential neighborhood. On the time, investigators confirmed Rooks had suffered a number of gunshot wounds and was pronounced lifeless on the scene. After an intensive investigation, Silento was recognized as the first suspect.
From his in a single day rise to viral fame to his authorized troubles earlier than and after the arrest, listed here are 5 issues to learn about Silento.
1. Silento rose to fame at simply 16 years outdated along with his debut single, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae).”
The rapper, then only a highschool pupil, launched his largest tune on SoundCloud in 2015 (he labored on the tune with beatsmith Bolo Da Producer). “Inside the first day it went to 1,000 listens. The subsequent day it was at 4,000,” Silento wrote on his web site, and so he determined to drop the music video for the tune on his seventeenth birthday in Jan. 2015. The video now has greater than 1.7 billion views, and the tune itself peaked on the No. 3 place on Billboard’s “Scorching 100” chart.
2. Regardless of signing with an enormous label, Silento determined to complete the remainder of his highschool expertise.
The success of “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” inked a take care of Capitol Information, however he didn’t go the homeschooling route afterwards. “I didn’t get to expertise plenty of the issues new artists get to expertise after they’re first signed. Sure occasions, performances. I used to be nonetheless in class working to get my diploma,” Silento additionally wrote on his web site.
3. You’ve most likely heard Silento on this different hit tune, too.
After kicking off his music profession with “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” Silento labored on collaborations with different artists. One in all his most notable collabs was “Dessert” with Dawin. The unique tune dropped in March of 2015, however Silento got here on-board for the music video that was launched in Oct. 2019, which is now nearing 200 million views on YouTube.
4. He adopted up the success of his debut single along with his first album, Contemporary Outta Excessive College.
Silento dropped his debut album in Sept. 2018.
The rapper additionally used his newfound fame to go to kids’s hospitals and even obtained “an honor from the mayor of Augusta, Georgia for his charitable work inside Atlanta,” the place he’s from, based on Silento’s web site. In 2019, he partnered with DoSomething.org’s “The Hit We’ll Take” marketing campaign in opposition to e-cigs, vapes and Juuling.
5. Silento was arrested on three separate events in 2020.
He was arrested twice inside the span of two days in Aug. 2020. One of many arrests was for allegedly “threatening two strangers with a hatchet final weekend” on Aug. 29, which the Los Angeles County District Lawyer’s Workplace introduced in a press launch obtained by ipromiseyoumedia. The rapper had confronted “two felony counts of assault with a lethal weapon with allegations of utilizing a hatchet as a lethal and harmful weapon,” the report added.
Silento reportedly “entered the strangers’ residence whereas trying to find his girlfriend,” and “the owners and their kids have been dwelling on the time and have been shaken by the intrusion however unhurt,” which the LAPD instructed ABC 7. This occurred after Silento was arrested and posted bail only a day prior in Santa Ana (the place he lives) on Aug. 28, based on on-line information from the Orange County Sheriff’s Division. He was booked “after a report of a home disturbance” based on authorities, per ABC 7. ipromiseyoumedia had reached out to Silento’s rep for remark on the time.
Silento then reportedly missed his courtroom listening to in Sept. 2020 and a bench warrant of $105,000 was issued for his arrest, XXL journal reported. Then, in October, Silento was arrested after reportedly “driving over 140 MPH in Atlanta”; he was launched on his “personal recognizance” on the identical day of the arrest, the outlet reported.
