The rapper Silento brought together hot dance moves in ‘Watch Me Whip/Nae Nae’ – making it a blockbuster that won the Billboard award for the top most streaming song. DJ Saif and Sound caught up with Silento to find out how he spins his magic.
Saif: Isn’t it crazy that this one song took over the world? Did you expect this?
Silento: It is crazy! Before I was singing it a capella at school, and people told me to keep doing it. The girls said keep dancing and keep doing it over and over. So I knew it would eventually take over…
Saif: After you put out the record ‘Watch Me’ did any famous artist approach you and say ‘Silento, let’s do a song together.’
Silento: Of course! Dlow ‘Bet You Can’t Do It Like Me’, Memphis ‘Hit The Quan’, Me and Robin Thicke have a track together. Me and Rich Homie Quan got a song together.
Saif: So when can we expect any of these tracks to come out?
Silento: Soon, this summer.
Saif: Now that you’ve become famous, you can pick and choose who you want to work with. Who do you want to work with?
Silento: The biggest star in the UAE! We can remix ‘Watch Me’ in the UAE. Lets do it!
Saif: If anyone reading this interview has an idea to collaborate with you, how can they get in touch with you?
Silento: You can follow me on Instagram and Twitter @therealsilento, on Facebook ‘Silento’ and on YouTube ‘SilentoTV’ and ‘SilentoVevo’. Make sure you follow me and tag me in anything you want to ask me.
Saif: A lot of people want to know how did the idea of ‘Watch Me Whip’ came about.
Silento: One day I was in chemistry class singing, rapping and entertaining everybody in the hallway and I captured a 15 second video of me singing a capella and then uploaded it on Instagram. People told me to make this into a song, asked me where they can find the song and so on. So I eventually produced the song and uploaded it on Soundcloud. The first night the song got 1000 likes, the next day 10,000, then it went on to 100,000 and after that it became big! On my birthday we posted ‘Watch Me’ on Youtube. It almost has one billion plays… I have just won an award for Billboard. Its crazy to be going against Drake, Future and Wiz Khalifa, but I got that award!
Saif: A lot of people say Silento is a ‘one hit wonder’ artist. I disagree because I think you have a lot of talent. What is your response to these people?
Silento: My response is that right now I just turned 18 so I’m taking control of my situation. I don’t want to just put out anything and for people to say ‘no, this is not it!’. There should be a lot of stuff coming out as I did a lot of features in the past months.
