Six months ago, barely anyone had heard of Silentó (real name: Richard Lamar Hawk), an aspiring rapper from Stone Mountain, Georgia. That all changed on June 25, 2015, when the rising high school senior dropped the video for his first single, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)”—an infectious clip centered around popular hip-hop dance moves. (He says he came up with the idea while entertaining classmates at lunch.) Within a week, the video had earned roughly 2.5 million views. By mid-October, it had logged more than 300 million, spawning countless parodies and celebrity imitations and eventually reaching Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Next up for its multiplatinum singer? Attending college, where he plans to study business. —Samantha Grossman