![]() ![]() At the time, there were maybe two or three other sites doing it. I got the email at around eight o’clock in the morning that the site was officially open, and then a couple hours later the planes hit. It officially launched on September 11, 2001. So I spent eight months reading and studying and learned how to build a mixtape website. Then I noticed, in the internet space, there weren’t many mixtapes being sold online. Long story short, I just kept hustling I got a couple on consignment based on what they sold. It was hard, because I was living in Baltimore for a few years at the time, and a lot of stores didn’t really know who Whoo Kid was. I’m learning the internet, I need to make some money, so let me help you get these mixtapes out.’ Back then, no one wanted to buy. At the same time he met 50 Cent, and I told them, ‘Hey, I can help you guys. He had a little buzz circling in the streets with his mixtapes. Q: In 1999 I reached out to a longtime friend of mine, DJ Whoo Kid, who I’ve known for over 25 years. Gawker: Before WorldStar you were in the mixtape game, right? “If you don’t like it, go fuck yourself.” A slight grin gives way before he continues. Watching NWA, 2Live Crew, and Eminem being themselves, being real, and getting criticized-and Tupac with Delores Tucker-this is who we are,” he says of WorldStar. “Hip-hop is profanity, it’s violence, it’s all of the above. Really, it’s all part of Q’s larger plan to provide the masses with the “realness” that made hip-hop such an unstoppable force. It can be ugly at times, but so is reality. WorldStar’s mission, so he believes, is to provide coverage of communities that larger news organizations like CNN or MSNBC might ignore. The easy argument: It’s all just click bait, and isn’t every website doing that these days? But to Q, it’s more than that. ![]() Aside from featuring music videos, both regional and mainstream, it regularly posts videos depicting unimaginable violence (the killing of 16-year-old Chicago student Derrion Albert in 2009, for example) and bare-ass nudity. The site, though, is not without controversy. But all of that was almost 10 years ago, and he goes by Q now.Īs it stands today, WorldStar has become a household name among a generation of kids raised on Facebook and Lil’ Wayne lyrics. He’ll later tell me of the time he pawned his son’s video games so he could buy food at Wal-mart, struggled to pay rent, but kept at it because he knew he was on to something (he admits WSHH did not turn a profit until 2009). “And we’ve grown so organically based on the trueness of the site.” O’Denat is talking about WorldStarHipHop, the video site he created in 2005 as a means to provide for his family. ![]() O’Denat’s speech is deliberate and gentle, and not at all what you might expect from a man his size. ![]() He knows something that you don’t.Īnd here he is, the Hollis, Queens-raised kid turned internet entrepreneur who built a media empire off shock and awe, the man who understands that maybe, deep down, all people really want is to be entertained, and whether that pleasure comes by watching two kids fight or some girl shake her ass-well, that’s your choice, not his. The deceptively knowing smile that spreads across his round face from time to time. His is a physically-commanding presence-a bull of a man-and I begin to think everything I have read about him up until this point is true. We’re 35 floors high above midtown Manhattan and Lee O’Denat occupies the seat across from me. ![]()
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