Unless you have purposely tried to mute everything around you, chances are you have heard, saw or even sung along to “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” and may have even tried to hit the whip once or twice when nobody was looking.
The song is from the teenage newcomer and Atlanta native, Silento. The name Silento actually means “less talk, more action.” So the young man is living up to his name.
Despite his success of being signed to a major record label at age 16, travelling the world to perform and having celebrities and politicians alike dancing to his song, Silento stays humble. He only gets an allowance from his parents so as to not overspend. He also goes to school everyday, unless its a major interview or performance. He says his dreams are big, so it takes discipline. Graduating high school is one of those disciplined choices.
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“I had a dream being in front of millions of people performing, so it seems like it’s going to happen,” explains Silento. And this dream of his was all started in the ATL. Silento was known in school for rapping catchy words and phrases and would do this everyday. One day, he started rapping ‘watch me whip, watch me nae nae’ over and over and that was something people seemed to be a fan of. So he took it to Instagram to see what kind of feedback he would get.
“I did without any music, just a capella and put it on Instagram. I got a whole bunch of comments, girls were just commenting and tagging other people,” he remembers. “I’m like ‘ok, 200-300 comments, it’s time to make that a song’ because that’s automatically support.”
And he was right. After all, the video has more than 670 Million views on youtube after only 6 months. He’s approaching the “Gangham Style” number of views being 1 Billion.
At first, he received a different reaction from his teachers in school, but now he’s approached by everyone.
“Teachers I never talked to before were speaking to me,” he says with a smile. “Oh you made that song? Nice!”
But Silento takes that as a compliment. He recognizes all different kinds of people come together to dance, particularly, to his song. “I just want people to have fun. It’s like people start smiling and all the bad goes away when my song comes on. It’s rated E for everyone!”
And if you were to search for Silento’s song on Google, you will quickly find that yes it is for everyone. People from all over the world including Australia, Britain and China have all created their own videos from the song. The song even has a cult fitness following.
Using the song as a backdrop to workout, there are over 5,000 workout videos to Silento’s “Watch Me”. Yes, you read that right, 5,000.
Jared Paschall is a gym teacher at Harvest Elementary School in Harvest, Alabama who made a creative cardio routine to Silento’s “Watch me (Whip/Nae Nae)” for his students.
In an interview for AL.com, Paschall said, “Since they loved the song so much and many of them already knew some…
…moves, I decided to incorporate exercise into music and get them excited about doing a cardio workout.” Paschall also said in the interview that he filmed his students demonstrating the dance workout so that other teachers can try it out in their schools.
So what does Silento do with all this fame and success? He humbly answers:
“I’m going to school, man. I need to show them that this can be done and you can still go to school and get good grades too.”
He says that he’s in the forefront of the next generation of rap for the simple fact that he doesn’t curse and will not curse. He just wants to make people feel good.
And what’s next for this young phenom? He says he looks forward to acting and one day producing movies in the future. Only time will tell, but until then, just keep watching. He’ll show you better than he can tell you.
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