What Happened to Silentó? Serving a 30-Year Sentence in 2026

If you were anywhere near a middle-school gym, a wedding reception, or a phone screen in 2015, you knew the moves before you knew his name. “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” was inescapable — a viral dance anthem powered by a teenager named Silentó. And then the music stopped. What followed was not a quiet fade-out but a genuine tragedy: a fatal family shooting, a long-documented mental-health crisis, and, in 2025, a 30-year prison sentence. Here is the sober, fully sourced account of where Silentó is now in 2026.

01Profile

Stage name

Silentó

Full name

Ricky Lamar Hawk

Born

January 23, 1998 (28 years old)

Birthplace

Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA

Occupation

Rapper, singer (2015–2021)

Best known for

"Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" (2015)

Current status

Incarcerated in Georgia after a 2025 manslaughter conviction

Unlike most “where are they now” stories, Silentó’s does not end with a comeback or a reinvention. It ends, for now, in a courtroom. What follows treats the serious parts seriously — a man is dead, and another is serving a decades-long sentence — while still telling the story of how a teenager briefly owned the internet.

02The Rise: A Viral Teenager

One song, one dance craze

In January 2015, a high-schooler from the Atlanta area quietly posted a song called “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” to SoundCloud. Within months it had exploded. Fan-made dance videos flooded YouTube and Vine, the “whip” and the “nae nae” became a nationwide playground reflex, and Capitol Records officially released the single on May 5, 2015.

The numbers were enormous for a debut. According to Billboard, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 and spent more than a year on the chart. The Recording Industry Association of America later certified it multi-platinum. Silentó was still a teenager, roughly 17 years old, when he became one of the defining sounds of the year.

Trying to build a career

For a moment, it looked like a launchpad. Silentó toured behind the single, performed on TV, and worked to prove he was more than a one-song novelty. He collaborated internationally, including a 2016 track, “Spotlight,” with the Korean artist Punch. In 2018 he released the project “Fresh Outta High School” and a follow-up later that year.

But nothing came close to the reach of that first hit. As the dance-craze era of viral music moved on, so did much of the audience. By the end of the decade, Silentó was better known as a nostalgia touchstone — a name that instantly transported people back to 2015 — than as a working recording artist.

03The 2021 Shooting

Behind the scenes, Silentó had been open about serious personal struggles for years — and by 2021, those struggles collided with a devastating crime.

In the early-morning hours of January 21, 2021, in DeKalb County, Georgia, 34-year-old Frederick Rooks III — Silentó’s cousin — was found with multiple gunshot wounds and died at the scene. According to CBS News and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, investigators recovered roughly 10 shell casings near the body, security footage captured a white BMW SUV registered to Hawk fleeing minutes after the gunfire, and ballistics later tied the casings to Hawk’s firearm. Hawk was arrested on February 1, 2021, and initially charged with malice murder and felony murder.

• 2019In an interview and later in a televised segment, Silentó publicly discusses struggling with anxiety and depression.
• 2020By his own account and that of his representatives, he attempts suicide and continues to struggle with his mental health; he also faces separate arrests reported that year.
• Jan. 21, 2021His cousin, Frederick Rooks III, 34, is fatally shot in DeKalb County, Georgia.
• Feb. 1, 2021Silentó (Ricky Lamar Hawk) is arrested and charged with malice murder and felony murder.
• 2021–2025He remains in custody as the case moves through the courts.
• June 11, 2025He pleads guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter and other charges and is sentenced to 30 years in prison.

At the time of his arrest, his publicist stated that he was “suffering immensely from a series of mental health illnesses,” reflecting a difficult period that Silentó himself had spoken about publicly in the years before the shooting. Those statements are matters of public record and are noted here as documented context, not as an excuse or a diagnosis.

04The Guilty Plea and Sentencing

The case was resolved on June 11, 2025. According to CBS News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, Hawk pleaded guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter — a charge reduced from the original malice-murder count — along with aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and concealing the death of another. The murder charge was dropped as part of the plea agreement.

“Guilty but mentally ill” is a specific legal outcome in Georgia: the defendant is still convicted and sentenced, but the plea formally acknowledges a mental-health condition and can affect how the sentence is served. Under the agreement, prosecutors said Hawk received a 30-year sentence, with credit for the time he had already spent in custody since his 2021 arrest.

The facts prosecutors laid out were grim. According to their account, Hawk had admitted during a police interview to shooting Rooks, and the physical evidence — the shell casings, the ballistics match, and the SUV footage — corroborated his role. There is no ambiguity in the record about the conviction: Silentó is a convicted man serving a long sentence for killing his cousin.

“This case represents a tragic loss of life and a family torn apart. We hope this resolution brings some measure of closure.” — Statement reflecting the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, June 2025

Out of respect for Frederick Rooks III and his family, it bears repeating that the human cost here is not abstract. A 34-year-old man lost his life, and no account of Silentó’s fame changes that.

05Where He Is Now

Behind bars in Georgia

As of 2026, that is the whole answer: Silentó is incarcerated in Georgia, serving the 30-year sentence handed down in June 2025. He is not recording, not touring, and not, by any verified account, releasing new music. The teenage sensation who once had the country doing the same dance is now a prisoner of the state, still in his late twenties.

A mental-health story that predated the crime

What separates this from a simple crime-blotter item is the long, publicly documented mental-health thread running through it. Years before the shooting, Silentó had spoken openly about anxiety and depression. In a widely circulated 2019 interview he said, “I’ve been fighting demons my whole life,” and he and his representatives later described a 2020 suicide attempt. His “guilty but mentally ill” plea folded that history into the legal record.

None of this is offered as speculation — every element above traces to court proceedings or mainstream reporting from outlets including CBS News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Newsweek. And none of it lessens what happened to Frederick Rooks. But it does explain why coverage of the case has so often framed it as a tragedy on more than one side: a young man who found sudden fame, struggled visibly and publicly, and ended up convicted of killing a relative.

The song outlives the story

The strange coda is that “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” simply refuses to disappear. It still circulates on streaming platforms, still surfaces in nostalgia clips and throwback playlists, and still gets a generation instantly reminiscing about 2015. The song’s cultural life has, in a sense, completely detached from its creator’s. For millions of casual listeners, Silentó remains a joyful memory — a fact that sits uneasily alongside the reality of where he actually is now.

06Summary

Silentó’s story is not a comeback and not a reinvention. It is a cautionary and genuinely sad account of a teenager who caught lightning in a bottle, struggled with documented mental-health issues in full public view, and was ultimately convicted in the killing of his own cousin.

There is no tidy ending to offer here — only a set of facts on the public record. A hit song that still makes people smile, a life lost, and a young man serving three decades behind bars. Sometimes “where are they now” has no happy answer, and honesty means saying so plainly.