In 2015, a teenager named Silentó had the world dancing. His debut single “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” was a cultural phenomenon, an instant viral hit born out of Vine clips, high school gym routines, and bedroom dance videos. The song soared to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, soundtracked pep rallies across America, and racked up nearly 2 billion views on YouTube. Ricky Hawk, the Atlanta teen behind the track, became the face of a new kind of fame, but behind the catchy hook and cartoonish dance moves was a young man grappling with a reality far heavier than the spotlight ever revealed.

On June 11, 2025, in a DeKalb County courtroom just outside Atlanta, Ricky Lamar Hawk was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 2021 shooting death of his cousin, Frederick Rooks. Originally charged with malice murder, Hawk accepted a plea deal that dropped the felony murder charge. He also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and concealing the death of another.

According to police, Rooks’ body was discovered on a residential road near Panthersville, Georgia. The scene was chilling, Rooks had been shot multiple times and left abandoned. Silentó, then 23, was arrested shortly after. The story barely made national headlines, overshadowed by a news cycle constantly cycling through tragedy, scandal, and celebrity implosions.

Hawk’s family, and Rooks’, appeared in court to witness the sentencing. While some expressed disappointment at what they viewed as a lenient punishment, others were visibly torn. “I’m sorry for both sides,” one relative said during the hearing, capturing the complicated grief that emerges when tragedy strikes from within a family.

So how did Ricky Hawk go from viral sensation to convicted felon?

In the years after “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” Silentó struggled to replicate the success of his debut. But what was happening behind the scenes was darker than a stalled career. According to his former publicist Chanel Hudson, Hawk had been battling severe mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. In 2020, she said, he attempted suicide. That same year, he was arrested twice in California, once for domestic violence and again for walking into a stranger’s home with a hatchet. His behavior had become erratic and alarming.

Mental health illness is very common among “one hit” artists. A teenager is catapulted into fame overnight, handed instant visibility, money, and pressure, with no infrastructure to support him emotionally or mentally. As is so often the case in American fame narratives, the story went from viral video to police blotter with almost no transition. He was a kid whose mental health deteriorated in public, and whose cries for help, though documented, were never fully addressed. The criminal justice system recognized his illness only after a life was taken, when it was already too late for intervention to be anything but reactive.

The case forces uncomfortable questions: What does accountability look like when mental illness and violence collide? What responsibility does the industry bear for its youngest, most unprepared stars? And what do we do with the legacy of a song that was meant to bring joy, now forever linked to something unimaginably darker? There won’t be easy answers. But there’s now a tragic coda to a song that once had the whole world dancing.